69 Performance Club
69 Performance Club is an initiative of Forum Lenteng, a Jakarta-based social and cultural organisation that began back in 2003 using art and new media as a basis for studying social phenomenon. 69 Performance Club was launched in 2016 by Hafiz Rancajale, Otty Widasari, Rachmadi and Muhammad Fauzan, Abi Rama and Hanif Alghifary as a specific research, documentation and experimental platform for performance art. The group produces a wide range of activities, including workshops, monthly performances, discussion groups, lectures,… targeted on interested members of the public and artists keen on making a contribution to the history and development of performance art in Indonesia. What their vision and activities have in common is the inextricable link between art and society. 69 Performance Club presented a series of lectures last year about the history of performance art, with various artists, curators and researchers being invited to give the talks. It also produced monthly performances designed to offer younger artists an understanding of the medium's artistic and production opportunities.
[performance]
Penal Colony (2017) – 22.11.2017 – 8 pm
Drawing its inspiration from “In the Penal Colony”, a short story by Franz Kafka, Forum Lenteng and 69 Performance Club spent an entire year examining the question of how the concept of the penal colony may be applied to contemporary society. A central and defining feature of the penal colony is the idea of imprisonment within a ubiquitous but invisible control system. They showed their research findings for the first time during ARKIPEL, the Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, in August 2017. 69 Performance Club turned its investigation into a digital media-based performance as a source not only of a critical appraisal but also a key component of the production process. As far as they are concerned, users of digital and social media are the new prisoners of an invisible system monitoring all their activities and movements. Paradoxically, however, they manage to overcome this logic of domination as a result of their creative and subversive use of the opportunities offered by this same technology (laptops, projectors, schemes, webcams and software). After Ghent, the Penal Colony will move on to Prague (Czech Republic) and then travel to various other places. The performance will be invested with a different content and meaning as a reflection of the social and cultural context of the location in question.
