Indonesian performance art club shocks and startles with confrontational shows not all will enjoy
- Established in 2016, 69 Performance Club puts on shows that are impossible to ignore – think an almost nude man slapping his body for 10 minutes
- The performances are meant to break down ‘the wilderness of ignorance’ that mainstream culture lives by, using the body as a medium to deliver a message
Slapping their bodies and running in chaotic circles flailing their limbs, members of Jakarta’s controversial 69 Performance Club create confrontational shows that aren’t always easy to enjoy, but are impossible to ignore. The collective, whose members range in age from 17 to 50, have staged a number of startling productions, with scenes that can make an onlooker feel uncomfortable – as is sometimes the intention.
“Performance art in Indonesia is a branch of art that is still quite ‘sexy’,” says Dhanurendra Pandji, a 22-year-old oil painter and maker of art films, meaning that it is a type of art still relatively new in Indonesia that piques the curiosity of the audience and intrigues prospective performers. “This sense of newness often gets thought of as ‘weirdness’ because people here are not used to it yet. For me, it gets to the essence of performance art, which is utilising the body as a medium to deliver a message.”
Dhanurendra comes from Temanggung, in Central Java province, and his most commanding work for the club is The Worshipper. In this performance piece, he carries an empty glass bottle in his teeth and crawls around the room at a dramatically slow pace for close to 10 minutes. Oblivious to obstacles, he actually bumps into audience members in an almost animal-like way.
Established in 2016, 69 Performance Club was set up by members of the Lenteng Forum, a creative community focused on film, literature and fine-arts discussions that was founded 16 years ago and is still active today.
Like the forum, members of 69 Performance Club consist of students from a colourful range of disciplines including international relations, communications, criminology, archaeology, philosophy, economics, journalism, fine arts and film. As something of a homage, the club took the 69 in its name from the Lenteng Forum secretariat’s building number.
All members have taken a class at the forum called “MilisiFilem” (Film Militia), which focuses on experimental filmmaking and visual arts, closely correlated with performance art. But not all club members are performers; some joined to study their fellow club members’ performance art or simply to observe.