Paintings and a visitor

Here are some pictures of the paintings which I bought a couple of weeks ago:

I bought the freaky rabbit one directly above the window (it is green, yellow and red), and the small, rectangular one on  the bottom left side.

I got the blue one with the reference to the Cure ("Boys Don't Cry"), but it says "Boys Don't Pray", a statement about gender and religiousity in Indonesia.

And here is a blurry close-up of the small rectangular painting from the first photograph.

And this is the freaky giant, jumping spider that was in my room.

Jakarta-Bandung-Yogya-Kalimantan-Bali-Yogyaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Last friday, I went to Jakarta to see Peaches, a crazy Canadian singer, perform, and I visited with Megan (the other Fulbright researcher based in Yogya) and Desmond (a Fulbright researcher based in Jakarta). I stayed in Desmond's swanky apartment in downtown Jakarta, and Megan has been staying with her friend Yuyun in the same apartment complex, in the adjoining tower. I headed straight from the airport to meet Megan in Jakarta's classiest mall, where we drank coffee and browsed designer clothes which cost more than our 10 month research grant. After dropping our stuff at the apartments and cleaning up, we grabbed dinner at a pancake restaurant in FX Lifestyle Center, an absurd mall with bars, lounges, a few shops, and a 10 story slide in the middle. It turned out that a receipt for a purchase of 50,000 rupiah (about 5 bucks) gets you a free ride on the slide, and our combined dinner cost just enough for Megan, Desmond, Yuyun (who met us at the resto) and me to ride for "free". Of course, we didn't figure this out right away, and had to descend back to the ground floor to ask the restaurant staff for a copy of our receipt.

The slide, which kids fly down every few minutes, terrified me. Helmet and safety jacket strapped on, I plummeted to the bottom, where I was greeted by a series of flashes. The whole thing is photo documented, and we had a few group shots taken to memorialize our infantilizing traumatic experience.

Afterwards, we went to Indochine, the giant club complex at the top to linger with Jakarta's avant-garde hipster kids -- metallic bat-wing ponchos, black tights, black framed glasses, mini-bubble dresses, and asymetrical bowl-cuts abounded. Peaches appeared in a giant fur-suit, which she quickly shed for raunchy outifts to match her obscene lyrics. There is an amazing novelty seeing Peaches perform songs like "f*** the pain away", while wearing a leotard with a light glowing in her crotch, in a country home to the world's largest Muslim population. Was I worried about police shutting it down, or Islamic extremists attacking the venue? Mildly. But it was refreshing to see these crazy, funky hipster kids go wild.

The next day involved a few galleries and malls, and early Sunday morning (10AM, haha, sigh), I set off to the train station to ride to Bandung, Java's style capital. I will try to write a little about it later.

I got back to Yogya on Tuesday, and Megan and I gathered to plan a trip to Kalimantan (the southern 2/3rds of Borneo which are Indonesian territory -- the northern 1/3rd is split by Malaysia and Brunei). Desmond alerted us in Jakarta to a research trip he is taking to the east coast of the island, and asked if we would want to meet him there for some traveling once he finished his research.

So, on Monday, Megan and I fly to Balikpapan, where we will catch a propeller plane to Berau, a bus to some boondock coastal town, and a boat to the Derawan Islands. After a couple of days, we will travel back to Balikpapan, where Megan and I will get a plane to fly down to Banjarmasin on the southern coast. From there, we'll fly on a prop plane to Pangkan Bun to hire a boat to go into the jungle. I'm torn about this segment -- a few-day boat ride into the jungle so that we can see orangutans will involve wayyyy toooo much wildlife for me: crocodiles, leopards, pythons, and all things evil/dangerous. Megan seems confident, and I know that I'll appreciate the experience. Once we are back in Banjarmasin, we will check out the city before flying back to Yogya, where will get clean clothes, and then go to Bali for a week for a Fulbright event.
The next few weeks will be crazy.
Deep breathes.

Down the hole...

As I sat on the stiff seat, tense springs pressing against my body, I struggled to keep the pages of the weekend Jakarta Globe stiff against the shaking and vibrations of the old train. I was heading east on my way from Jakarta to Bandung, a city in West Java, and given some extra time in Gambir Station due to a delay in the train, I picked up a copy of the newspaper to avoid explicitly productive reading. It was my first time on the Parahyangan line -- the budget line between Jakarta and Bandung, and as I began to process the length of the journey (the mountainous terrain and the track's dangerous curves require the train to crawl for most of the trip), I wondered who takes this train?

Answering my question, an article on page two of the newspaper explains: very few people. The line is a big loser for Indonesia's train company, and to cut their losses, the company is cutting the Parahayangan line just two weeks after my trip. Sure, the seats are awful and the pace is mind-numbing. But as we crawled through the mountains, crossing numerous towering railway bridges (I try not to think about their stability), the windows of the train look out over West Java's most beautiful landscapes. Physics-defying, terraced rice paddies are wedged in steep valleys, and volcanoes bite down on the horizon like Java's sharp, black teeth. I didn't even try to take a picture through the age-worn plexiglass windows, but did snap a shot of the rocks beneath the train made visible in the hole of the toilet.

Cafe_Street_Cafe

Grabbing a table and settling into the hard, weathered, geometric-wooden seat, I scanned the room while restlessly opening and closing the menu. Lolly and I had arrived at the cafe early enough to catch the DJ's warming up for their scheduled hiphop performance necessitated by the street art exhibit opening in the cafe that night. It seems as though you cannot have a gallery opening without the complete package of food, jesters and fireworks -- live musical acts are the standard at gallery openings in Yogya. Openings also offer free catalogues, posters, stickers or even odd plastic trinkets. Thus, an early arrival guarantees the best selection of loot. Lolly and I scanned the room, registering the usual European backpacker clients, common opening snacks of crispy cassava chips and glutinous rice cakes, cluster of baggy-clothes-clad hip hop kids, and recognizable LoveHateLove paintings filling the walls.

For the show, LoveHateLove, the most prolific graffiti artist in Yogya, turned his spray and brushes to mobile, salable surfaces and filled the walls of ViaVia with pieces to make some income. Graffiti, Murals, or vandalism -- whatever you prefer to call it -- doesn't usually lead to income, so an artist/vandal cannot continue without some source for money and supplies. ViaVia, an institution in Yogya that is part of a larger chain of Belgian "traveler cafes", has long supported "alternative artists", so it was no surprise to hear that they would host LoveHateLove and a crew of hiphop musicians.

So, as I considered ordering something from the cafe menu, I also scanned the walls, wondering whether one of LHL's paintings would be my loot for the night. We noticed Boy, the curator/organizor of the event, who confirmed that all of the paintings were for sale and that the numbers joining each piece was in fact the cost in Indonesian Rupiahs and not US Dollars. Stimulated by the low costs and lack of buyers, Lolly and I scanned the rooms for our favorite works and informed Boy that we wanted to purchase them. Once the red-dots were permanent, I stepped back to re-evaluate the $80 worth of paintings which will have a new home in my boarding house. Perhaps I went a little overboard by purchasing three canvases. There were two random paintings which I wanted to buy together as a set -- one with the face of a young man with four eyes, with the text "Boys Don't Pray", and one with a rabbit with the same four eyes, reading "Going to Logos". The third is a smaller piece with some printed-images pasted on, which in combination with paint create an intense, energetic composition.

It was a strange experience to purchase paintings, which I associate with wealthy individuals and either a kind of investor-consciousness or a romanticism for a kind of aesthetic purity. My motives were completely selfish in buying the paintings -- they are awesome keepsakes to remind me of Yogya's streetscape, a material link to  the past. But if I'm not a collector of Indonesian art, how does this transaction reflect on my identity in Yogya's artist communities? My funds for art are limited, and I make no promises about a safe or accessible storage facility -- in my possession, art will have a limited lifespan.

More details and maybe even some images will come soon! I'm still re-adjusting to the new digital environment of my back-amongst-the-living laptop with its new version of Windows. I'm still something of a tourist in Windows 7, having yet to accept that it might be permanent on my computer, and that I might just settle down with it, living a Windows 7 expatriate life.