biographies

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Ade Darmawan (b.1974 in Jakarta, Indonesia), graduated from the Graphic Art Department at the Indonesia Art Institute (ISI). A year after his first solo exhibition in 1997 at the Cemeti Contemporary Art Gallery, Yogyakarta (now Cemeti Art House), he went to Amsterdam for a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten. Back from Amsterdam in 2000, with five other artists from Jakarta he founded ruangrupa. He has participated in art projects and exhibitions in several cities in Indonesia and around the world, including Durban, Bangkok, Mumbai, Mexico City, Antwerp, Istanbul and Sydney. He lives and works in Jakarta as an artist, and director of ruangrupa.

Agung Hujatnikajennong (b. 1976, Tasikmalaya, Indonesia) is a lecturer at the Department of Art, Faculty of Art and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) Indonesia. Having concluded his undergraduate (2001) and graduate (2006) studies, he is now doing doctoral research on Indonesian art curatorship at his alma mater. Since 1999, he has contributed to various publications, and presented in many seminars in Indonesia and abroad. Agung was curator-in-residence in Australia (Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 2002) and in Japan (Nanjo and Associates, Tokyo, 2004). Since 2001, he has been working as the curator at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, and has curated numerous exhibitions in Indonesia and abroad, including OK Video – Jakarta Video Festival (2003, and SUB/VERSION, 2005); Bandung New Emergence (2006, 2008, 2010); Agus Suwage’s solo exhibition, I/CON (2007); Handiwirman Syahputra’s In Lingo (2008); and Heri Dono’s Nobody’s Land (2008). In 2009, he curated Fluid Zones, the main exhibition of the Jakarta Biennale.

AW Akiq lives and works in Yogyakarta. He is a member of MES 56 and is responsible for workshop in the collective. He is involved in several projects and exhibitions. He conducted his solo exhibition at MES 56, ‘The Order of Things’ in 2010. He has participated in exhibitions “Angsana: Southeast Asian Photographers Taking Flight”, 2902 Gallery, Singapore; “Perfect World” by Akiq AW and Agung Nigroho Widhi, dGallery, Jakarta, “Indonesia Session at Tokyo Month of Photography”, Canon Gallery Tokyo. He is contributor writer for “Crash Project: Image Factory”, ‘SIGIarts Gallery, London; “On Camera”, Mes 56 Collective Exhibition at Ordinary Art Space, Seminyak, Bali.

Allison Holt is an American artist whose work explores, constructs and visualizes contemporary and traditional systems of knowledge, creating forms that expose hybrid realities through the use of video, sculpture, performance and diagrams. Her work emerges out of the rigorous interrogation of existing philosophies and cognitive processes, examining the relationships between reality, identity, cognition and illusion. She completed undergraduate studies at The Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA) and earned her M.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art (Boston, MA). Holt has presented and exhibited in venues such as the Boston CyberArts Festival, the House Of Natural Fiber (Yogyakarta), Howard Yezerski Gallery (Boston), Institute Seni Indonesia (Surakarta), Upgrade!Boston (Melbourne, Australia), and has held solo shows at Axiom Gallery for New and Experimental Media (Boston) and Cemeti Art House (Yogyakarta) where she is an artist in residence (2010). She has also been a resident artist at the Experimental Television Center (NY) and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (CA). Holt is researcher/developer for ZooMorph, a project by new media artist Lisa Jevbratt (funded by Creative Capital) and is a 2009-2010 J. William Fulbright Fellow in Central Java, Indonesia.

Aminuddin TH Siregar (b. 1973, Indonesia) or “Ucok” as he is called, is an independent curator and Director of Galeri Soemardja in Bandung Institute of Art’s (ITB) Fine Art Department. His masters thesis analyzes the critical turning points of Indonesian Modern Art discourse in the early 20th century, and he is the author of a recent book on the seminal Indonesian modern artist, Sudjojono (Sang Ahli Gambar dan Kawan-Kawan, S. Sudjojono Center and Galeri Canna, Jakarta, 2010. He is also actively involved in various contemporary art projects with emerging artists and groups in Indonesia. His own work has been exhibited widely in Indonesia, and abroad (including in Germany and Japan).

Andreas Treske is an editor, filmmaker, and media artist living in Turkey. He graduated from Munich Film Academy (Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München); His professional experience includes ongoing activities as a director and editor on film, video, and digital non-linear editing systems for cinema, and TV. From 1992 – 98 he was creative art staff for film, digital postproduction, and multimedia at the Munich Film Academy; and taught digital postproduction, film and video techniques. He has done extensive research on applied aesthetics for cinema and TV. From 1998 Treske taught film and video production, and new media theory, at the Department of Communication and Design, Bilkent University (Ankara), which he chaired from 2005 until 2010. Since the summer of 2010 he has been Assistant Professor at Yasar University in Izmir, Turkey. His multimedia exhibitions and interactive installations have been exhibited in Turkey, Portugal and Croatia; his short films have been screened at numerous international film festivals; and his feature-length documentary Takim Boyle Tutulur screened in 2005 in more than 50 Turkish cinemas. In 2008 he was picture editor for the feature length cinema documentary Mustafa, directed by Can Dündar. He was the organizer of the 3rd Video Vortex conference in Ankara. Treske’s earlier texts in the Video Vortex Readers may be read online, or downloaded for free, from:
http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/video-vortex/
http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/video-vortex-ii/

Andrew Lowenthal (General Manager, EngageMedia) has been working in the field of media and technology activism since 1998. He got started with video activists Access News in the late nineties before moving on to work actively with Melbourne Indymedia for six years. From 2006-08 he worked with the UK based Tactical Technology Collective as their participatory media project lead, editing the NGO-in-a-box series of free software packages and the more recent Message-in-a-box as well as facilitating at training camps in Indonesia, the Netherlands, Thailand and India. Andrew is based on the internet, or somewhere between Jakarta and Melbourne. EngageMedia works with independent videomakers, video activists, technologists, and campaigners to generate wider audiences, demystify new video distribution technologies, and create an online archive of independent video productions using open content licenses. We believe independent media and free and open technologies are fundamental to building the movements needed to challenge social injustice and environmental damage, as well as to providing and presenting solutions. You can find us at offices in Melbourne and Jakarta or online here http://www.engagemedia.org

Aryo Danusiri is a video artist and anthropologist born in Jakarta in 1973. His works have been exploring the circulations of new keywords, violence and memory in reconfiguring political and social landscape of post-authoritarian Indonesian 1998. Those works have premiered at various festivals, including Rotterdam, Amnesty Amsterdam, Mead Festival and Yamagata “New Asia Current.” His first feature length documentary, Playing Between Elephants was awarded “Movies That Matters for Best Human Rights Film” at Jakarta International Film Festival 2007 and “Best Documentary” at Brussels Independent IFF. In 2005, he finished his Master’s Degree in Visual Cultural Studies from Tromsø University, Norway. Danusiri is the filmmaker of Ragam Media Network, a Jakarta based institution that develops visual media as a catalyst for cross-cultural learning and community knowledge management. At present, he is doing his Ph.D. in the Media Anthropology program, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice at Harvard University.

Clarissa Chikiamco works as a Manila-based independent art curator and writer with a focus on contemporary art and video. She graduated magna cum laude BFA Art Management from Ateneo de Manila University and completed her master’s degree in Art Curatorship at the University of Melbourne on the merit-based scholarship, the Australian Endeavour Award. She won the Philippine Star’s Lifestyle Journalism Awards in Arts and Culture in 2006 and was also chosen for the Emerging Writers Program of Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces in Melbourne, 2008. She was part of the 2010 Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course and the first Asia Young Artist Festival in Gwangju, South Korea in 2011. She has written for several contemporary art exhibitions and recently completed a research residency at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Fukuoka, Japan. She is currently curating End Frame Video Art Project 3: Present, a series of solo exhibitions of Philippine artists presenting new video work from 2011-2012.

Emile Zile is an artist, filmmaker and performer engaged with the tension between reality and its mediation, the self and its representation and language and its translation. Building on a background of single-channel and performative video art, his current research focuses on
photographic portraiture with contemporary image-making techniques, site-specific audiovisual performance and the use of the internet as a site for mourning, transgression and revelation.

Forum Lenteng is an egalitarian non-profit organization, founded in July 2003 by communications and journalism students, artists, researchers and cultural analysts as a vehicle to examine problems of culture in society, and to support, widen and empower social and cultural studies in Indonesia. Forum Lenteng works by gathering and framing social and cultural data – historical and contemporary – with a view to developing solutions to various social and cultural problems in Indonesia and the world. Forum Lenteng fulfills its goals through the innovative use of audio-visual media (film and video) and publications (books, magazine and website) and has exhibited its works and research in Indonesia as well as in Germany and Canada (Images Festival 2010). Forum Lenteng will be represented at Video Vortex #7 by Andang Kelana and Mahardhika Yudha.

Hafiz (b. 1971, Indonesia) is an artist and a curator. From 1990-94, he studied Fine Art at the Jakarta Institute of Arts, Jakarta. He is one of the founders of ruangrupa (2000), and of Forum Lenteng (2003), both artist initiatives based in Jakarta. During 2007 and 2008, he worked as a curator for the Jakarta Art Council. Hafiz has curated a number of exhibitions in Indonesia especially in the field of media arts. In 2008, he received a curatorial fellowship from the Japan Foundation. As an artist, he has presented his works in national and international exhibitions, such as the Gwangju Biennale (2002) and the Istanbul Biennale (2005), together with ruangrupa. Individually, he has presented his work in Rotterdam, Berlin, Seoul, Tokyo, Sydney, Mumbai, Oberhausen, Singapore, Bamako-Mali, Paris, Mexico City and Los Angeles. Since 2003, Hafiz has run Forum Lenteng’s community development programme on new media. He is chief editor of Jurnal Footage, an online journal of film and video in Indonesia. Since 2007, Hafiz is director and artistic director of OK.Video – Jakarta International Video Festival. He lives and works in Jakarta.

Ronny Agustinus, one of the founders of Ruangrupa, is a writer, translator, and cultural critic. He is currently chief-editor at a left-leaning publisher, Marjin Kiri, and editor at an indie publisher, Antipasti. He blogs about Latin American literature at sastraalibi.blogspot.com.

Dr Thomas J. Berghuis is a Lecturer in Asian Art at the Department of Art History & Film Studies, and Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Asian Art & Archaeology, University of Sydney, Australia. He is a Visiting Fellow with the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University, conducting research on modern and contemporary art in Indonesia. As a curator, he has worked on major international projects including ‘Edge of Elsewhere’ (Sydney Festival, Campbelltown Art Centre and Gallery 4A, 2009), the 1^st Dashanzi International Arts Festival (798 Factory, Beijing, 2004), the 6^th Sharjah International Biennale (U.A.E, 2003) and the 3^rd Israel Video Art Biennial (Tel Aviv, 2006). His recent publications include Performance Art in China (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2006) and co-editor of a book marking the 10-year anniversary of ruangrupa, entitled Siasat: Expanding the Space and the Public (forthcoming 2011).

ABOUT THE ORGANISERS

Veronika Kusumaryati (b. Yogyakarta) is a graduate of the Jakarta Arts Institute, majoring in Cinema Studies. With Puput Kuspudjiati and Nayla Majestya, Veronika established and runs Film Studies Center at Jakarta Arts Institute. She has been working as film curator since 2007 while being a contributor for detikhot and The Jakarta Post. She will pursue a doctorate in social anthropology with secondary field in Visual Studies at Harvard University later this year.

David Teh works in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore, researching contemporary art and visual culture in Southeast Asia. He received his PhD in critical theory from the University of Sydney (2005), before moving to Bangkok, where he was an independent critic and curator until 2009. His projects there included Platform (2006); The More Things Change… The 5th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (2008); and Unreal Asia (55. Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, 2009). More recently, he was the curator of Itineraries: 3 Young Contemporaries at VWFA, Kuala Lumpur (2011). David has contributed to numerous publications including Art Asia Pacific, Art & Australia, Broadsheet and The Bangkok Post. His recent publications include essays in Theory Culture and Society, Third Text (forthcoming) and the Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond Youtube, as well as a catalogue essay for Video: an art, a history (Singapore Art Museum, 2011). David’s work on Video Vortex #7 is supported by an N.U.S. start-up research grant.