Para/Site Art Space is honoured to present Jompet. Third Realm, a new project developed by Jompet Kuswidananto in collaboration with theatre director Yudi Ahmad Tajudin. The history of Indonesian culture, as part of the Third World and former colonized countries, can be read as narratives of a nation that is perpetually in an “in-between” situation or state of transition. From pre-colonial to colonial periods, colonial to post-colonial, agrarian culture to industrial one, from industrial to post-industrial, from rural culture and cosmology to the urban ones.

The history of Indonesian culture is an “in-between” cultural history. A culture that is located between two cultural spaces: between the traditional and the modern, the original and the alien, the inside and the outside, the high brow and the low brow. It never (again?) stays and grows inside one cultural space that is specific and sharply different from another specific culture. It builds on a mix (and excess) of cultures. Its “body” is constituted by many different cultural layers.

As a cultural entity Indonesia is never singular, but the in-betweeness and the transitional conditions have become the overarching and constructing frame covering all the (sub)cultures within.

The exhibition revolves around a physical roof that transforms the gallery space into an installation that includes video, sculpture and performance. Jompet Kuswidananto and Yudi Ahmad Tajudin explain that “the “space” under the roof is constructed by a constantly shifting and changing milieu of ideas, events, performances and meanings. The space of “in-between”, where issues about origins, influences and identity could be discussed
simultaneously without privileging one over the other. In Java’s case: where one can be a Muslim (or any other religion) and a Javanese at the same time; local and global; modern and traditional. Where one is something in-between different things.”

A performance will be conducted on the opening night, 19th November at 7 pm.

In conjunction to this exhibition Para/Site Art Space presents Recorded Waves: Moving Images from Indonesia, a video programme curated by Katerina Valdivia Bruch including 12 artists from this country.

About Jompet Kuswidananto
Jompet Kuswidananto was born in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 1976. He trained as a musician, but practices in the Contemporary Art field, and has a strong interest in theater. He has exhibited in “Modernization & Urbanization” at Marronnier Art Center, Seoul (2003); 3rd Fukuoka Art Triennale (2005), Equatorial Rhythms at Stenersenmuseet, Oslo (2007); Yokohama Triennale (2008); Jakarta Biennale XIII (2009); 10e Biennale de Lyon (2009), Kuandu Biennial (2010) and “The Tradition of the New” at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai (2010). He has had solo shows at Osage Gallery (2009, 2010) and Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta (2008).

About Yudi Ahmad Tajudin
Yudi Ahmad Tajudin was born in 1972 in the town Tanjung Priok, Indonesia. He is a theatre director and founder of Teater Garasi. He lives and works in Yogyakarta.