Introduction: Happy Birthday

How to Pin Down Smoke: ruangrupa since 2000 is the fifteenth book published in the Exhibition Historiesseries. As the title implies, it seeks to do something that is not only difficult but arguably against the very nature of ruangrupa as an artistic collective.⁰¹ Born in 2000 during Reformasi, a process that overthrew Suharto’s three-decade-long authoritarian rule of Indonesia, ruru (the short form ruangrupa often use to describe themselves) are in many ways a product of their time and place. Reformasi was a period of regime change and widening possibility in many areas of Indonesia, yet it was about settling with the past without fully investigating it. This required citizens’ critical negotiation, toleration and pragmatism in daily life, forms of engagement which have come to define ruru and how they approach the cultural field internationally. Their activities as a collective cross many borders – both geographic and intellectual – and will often frustrate demands for disciplinary precision, control and order which derive from a once-hegemonic (Western, modernist) world view. Instead, they have developed subtle methods to subvert ‘art’; they go against earnestness and are flexible, fun-loving and practical; they are playful about their self-image while also being committed to collective practice and their long-established ways of working amongst themselves and with others.

As a group, they are attuned to archiving themselves and producing narratives both printed and online that highlight aspects of their story without claiming a totalising picture or a dogmatic manifesto. They are rooted in their local economies, and not afraid of using capitalist strategies, marketing, networking, mainstream culture or establishment politics when these paths are useful for their survival. As much as they are a product of their Jakarta environment, they are also fully engaged in transnational solidarity, shaping resource- and knowledge-sharing networks that span Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. With these strategies, ruru has survived two and a half decades. Through this book and the research that has shaped it, the Exhibition Historieseditorial collective has constantly returned to three key questions: What kind of collective activism is ruru evocating? Where did it come from? How has it kept ruru going for decades in Jakarta and beyond?

Outside Indonesia, ruru is perhaps most widely recognised for their role as artistic directors of documenta fifteen – or lumbung I – in Kassel, Germany in 2022. To us, the significance of lumbung I is far reaching, and worthy of a book in itself – indeed, there is a substantial growing literature devoted to the event and its repercussions.⁰² But rather than have this one project dominate the book, we have chosen to focus on the wide span of ruru’s 25-year history – an approach that will also, we hope, open deeper understandings of their work in Kassel.⁰³ ruru’s project sought above all to change the infrastructural basis of the documenta. They experimented with models of resource-sharing and shared economic prosperity rooted in local knowledges in Java, Sulawesi and elsewhere in Indonesia. They exercised their rights as artistic directors to not control artists, instead giving participants the tools to autonomously organise themselves. They avoided the heroic position of the star curators of past documentas in favour of being one collective amongst many artists and groups. In retrospect, the project’s radical implications, alongside its geographical scope and what this was taken to represent by the German press and cultured bourgeoisie, may help explain the extremity of reaction it received at the time – which also served to obscure the show’s actual content.⁰⁴ Yet ruru’s call to build knowledge about the value of sustainable collectivity against oppressive regimes and institutions only increases in urgency. In widening the scope of ruru’s stories through an engagement with their work since 2000, we hope that this book contributes to an expanded appreciation of their practices and their relation to wider liberation activism and the possibilities of art and culture to address commoning, collectivity and situated knowledges.

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In developing this research, we have relied as much as possible on first-hand experience in its various forms of dialogue, teaching, field trips, parties and even rest. Like an inwardly rotating spiral, we started by talking to ruru’s wider circles of collaborators; then people who had personal connections with ruru and its projects; and lastly, ruru themselves, in Jakarta, Makassar, Amsterdam and Kassel. Moving outside-in is a strategy to enter ruru through its networks of collaboration and friendship, but also a way to ease the burden on them to articulate their histories for themselves. Additionally, we found it necessary to leverage the observations and life experiences of ruru’s friends for context, noticing the gaps in our own knowledge and understanding.

During the process of producing this book, Afterall also underwent some major changes, towards a more horizontal collective structure, which held curious parallels with what we observed from ruru. Throughout 2024 we slowed our publishing programme and broke the neat divisions in our actual job titles to explore more transversal ways of working together (think Jakarta). We filled in for our colleagues when new baby members came into the picture (think rurukids). We opened our office to connect with friends and visitors for snacks, casual chats and catch-ups (think ‘Lekker Eten Zonder Betalen’). These slow transformations continue to be cultivated within the team, and they feel closer to the spirit of resting than progressing.

We felt compelled to ground our research in life experience and to connect it with our community of writers. chitarum, whose work is presented in this book’s first section, ‘introducing ruangrupa’, belongs to a cohort of twenty young writers and practitioners with whom we have been building friendships and mutual mentorship since 2021.⁰⁵ chitarum’s hand-drawn comic ‘apa kabar’ (‘how are you?’) is based on interviews with long-time friend Julia Sarisetiati (aka Sari) and current ruru members. It is a portal into their heartfelt kinships and what sustains this collective on an intimate, personal level. This is complemented by Melani Budianta’s expansive critical analysis of ruangrupa’s organisational practice. Budianta, a leading scholar of Indonesian social movements, has observed ruru as a fellow traveller for decades. Theorising lumbung practice as a principle of resource sharing, she analyses the implementation of such practice and its funding structure in ruru’s formative period (2000–16), Gudang Sarinah period (2015–18) and Gudskul period (2018–date). Concluding the introductory section is Abidin Kusno, who addresses the deep connection between ruru as an urban collective and their home city of Jakarta. Reconnecting with his urbanist peers Iswanto Hartono and farid rakun, Kusno traces the material conditions and socio-historical context of the city since the 1950s in order to understand the specificity of ruru’s Jakarta, and their collective practice as expressive of the multicultural mega-city’s everyday urban ecologies and cultural ecosystems.

The expansive middle section of the book is devoted to an extended archive of ruangrupa. It gathers primary materials including photographic documentation, press releases, posters and flyers spanning a quarter century, up to the present. We have organised it with the intention of highlighting the range and diversity of ruru’s activities over the years, and as complement to ongoing plans for a free online resource of all these materials and more, to be hosted by lumbung.space in the future.⁰⁶ These materials are diverse and sometimes idiosyncratic, reflecting ruru’s own practices of archiving, where apparently random snapshots of gatherings and interactions can carry important insights into the longevity of the collective’s daily practice. In a sense, ruru is a hoarder. Across many, many projects, they have repeated their core repertoire of creative strategies, refining or elaborating them.⁰⁷ ruru hold onto what they created in the 2000s, and they continue to develop their programmes with new generations of members and friends.

This book’s archive of ruangrupa also doubles as a gathering point: fresh contributions from over thirty ruru members, friends and observers are placed in dialogue with primary documents, alongside selected historical texts, by Ade Darmawan, Ronny Agustinus, Ugeng T. Moetidjo, David Teh and farid rakun, which in different ways reflect significant moments in ruru’s history. These perspectives are complemented by the case studies gathered in the book’s third part, with newly commissioned essays highlighting particular key projects and areas of concern. Ardi Yunanto, in conversation with Ibrahim Soetomo, details the development of Karbon, ruangrupa’s publishing platform since 2000. Arianna Mercado considers ruru’s formative 2003 solo exhibition ‘Lekker Eten Zonder Betalen’ (‘Tasty Meal Without Paying’), when ruru threw an all-night party at Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta and exhibited the remnants, including leftover food; the event’s imagery has since been circulated as a kind of collective self-portrait. Umi Lestari and Mahardika Yudha explore the history of OK.Video, the international video and media arts biennial organised by ruru since 2003, in the context of social, political and technological shifts in Indonesia since the 1990s. Gesyada Siregar and Leonhard Bartolomeus, as longtime facilitators at Gudskul and RURU Gallery respectively, represent two different generations of practitioners growing up within ruru; their contributions reveal what it is like to work with and live amongst ruru and friends, offering us ways to understand collectivity with concrete examples and insiders’ learning. And as soundtrack to this archive-gathering, we have a ‘DJ set’ insert by The Secret Agents celebrating 25 years with ruru and friends.

The final section of the book expands on key critical, historical and practical questions that will emerge for anyone spending time in the company of ruru’s archives. Arianna Mercado and Wing Chan begin with a self-reflexive exploration of the research experience of trying to ‘pin down smoke’. Their analysis develops through close encounters with ruru’s internal workings, including its membership, financial resources and collaborative processes. Özge Ersoy shares the work of Asia Art Archive as it scopes the archives of ruru for cataloguing, which has developed alongside the research and development of the present publication; Ersoy reflects on the potentials and limitations of archiving a collective as long-lived, complex and playful as ruru. Enin Supriyanto offers a personal view on the Indonesian history leading up to Reformasi (and ruru), guiding us through Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (New Art Movement), study groups, field research, imprisonment, press freedom and cultural policy. Finally, Nuraini Juliastuti returns us to the practice of lumbung – as explored in detail by Melani Budianta at the outset of the book – to develop an expanded repertoire of communing via the concept of jamming, with examples from ruru’s contemporaries and beyond.

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We give our heartfelt thanks to all the contributors to this publication, as well as ruru and Gudskul friends for their generosity throughout the project. As our copy editor Deirdre O’Dwyer asked during the editorial process: ‘Are the people working on this ruru book the most kind and generous-spirited group you’ve worked with?’ The openness, trust and companionship of our collaborators added much meaning and warmth to the making of this book. We thank our steadfast partners in Exhibition Histories: Sneha Ragavan and Anthony Yung at Asia Art Archive; Lauren Cornell and Tom Eccles at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; Mick Wilson at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg; and Felix Vogel and Mi You at documenta Institut. This book coincides with ruru’s 25th birthday. We wish them a very happy birthday. The research has been a challenging yet enjoyable endeavour. We hope our readers and fellow researchers, writers and cultural workers will connect with ruru in new and unexpected ways. They remain an endlessly surprising and inventive collective, providing a wealth of material to explore fresh ways of imagining art and life together. We hope this book does a little justice to their magnanimous multiplicity.