Yakarta Viene (Jakarta is Coming), 2017

Video and archival installation
Artist collection

The installation work, Yakarta Viene, is a part of an ongoing investigation into the era of dictatorships in South America.

This work, which consists of murals and videos, originates from the terroristic message of the Patria y Libertad, a right-wing militant group, which was issued several months before the 1973 coup d’etat in Chile. In strategic locations, such as university campuses and factories, murals with the text YAKARTA VIENE appeared – meaning “Jakarta is coming” in Spanish. This slogan referred to the 1965-66 mass killings of suspected sympathisers of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), who were synonymous with being supporters of President Sukarno. The slogan became a political threat for labour leaders, activists and Unidad Popular militans and others who supported the government of Salvador Allende.

The videos in this work involved participants from the two countries. People from Santiago and Jakrta were invited to give share their testimonies. Chileans shared what they remembered about or imagined about the ‘YAKARTA VIENE’ murals, while those from Indonesia, were invited to create a competing narrative through their reading of this historical intersection.

 

About the Artist

Etcétera was founded by Loreto Garín Guzmán and Federico Zukerfield in Bueno Aires with an aim to entangle arts practices with social conflict in Argentina. They believe that art can play an important role in stimulating change. Etcétera works in a range of places, from arts centres, museums, galleries and on the streets. They believe that any space is able to become a space for cultural production. In 2005, with their activist friends and other cultural workers, they founded the International Errorist Movement Foundation, which became an international organisation to claim and consider ‘errors’ as the philosophical grounding for their way of life.


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