Operating an art space in Jakarta

Good morning and thank you for joining me this morning. I am Ening Nurjanah, the Program Manager at Komunitas Salihara.

Komunitas Salihara is an art space that is privately funded in Jakarta. We have a venue, black box theater, dance studios, music studios, and an outdoor theater. We hold weekly and monthly programs for performing arts as well literary festival.

Festival Salihara keempat 2012

Today my presentation will explain how we program and how we approach collaboration. Most of our programs involve collaborating with the artists from abroad. As we are privately funded, we don’t have much money to invite artists to come from abroad and so we collaborate with, for example, their country’s cultural center. If I want to invite an artist from Japan then I will work with the Japan Foundation in Jakarta. So far it’s been successful and we have been able to invite artists from abroad. Apart from performances we also have an education program including things like an acting course, painting course, and a philosophy course. During the festival we have a lot of workshops by the artists that are performing.

Here are some examples of the work we have done： This work, Warm is a collaboration between the Indonesian artist Sha Ine Febriyanti and the French director David Bobee. They both did residencies at Salihara and produced this performance. This one is Hiroshi Koike from Japan who also did a collaboration, workshop and performance with us. This is Leine Roebana from the Netherlands and this is a theater from Poland called Daniel and Aro. This Sinta Wullur from the Netherlands who did a collaboration.

Collaborating with numerous Japanese artists

I want to say that we are very open to collaborations with artists, and not only for our biannual festival. We also have regular programs that are held weekly or monthly. We plan our programs a year in advance and so we have to plan for the long term if performances are to be programed.

In order to implement our programs there are some things that we need to consider. First, we are privately funded and so we need to search for some funds in the long term. As the program is part of this, we need at least six-month long programs. We also rent the space for public use, so anyone can make a performance without our curation. We only present what we curate. If you propose something and it is in-line with our mission, we may collaborate with you as part of our curatorial program. In that case we will arrange everything to make the performance, the publication, the ticketing system, everything.

The majority of our collaborations are with artists from Japan and we haven’t worked with many performers from Asia. Japan has been very active in sending artists to Indonesia.

Audience’s Question: Is that because of money?

Most of the time, yes. First of all, the Japan Foundation has a representative in Indonesia. Other countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Cambodia don’t have a cultural center here so we cannot ask them to work with us. When we did do a collaboration with a dance company from Singapore (T.H.E Dance Company) a long time ago, they got help from the Ministry of Culture in Singapore to finance their trip to Salihara.

We can provide some money though. For example, if your Ministry of Culture gives you a grant for travel, we will take care of what happens in Jakarta – accommodation, per-diem, and maybe a small honorarium. The most expensive thing is the cost of travel. We see a lot of international collaborations for the festival, but for the regular program we work with Indonesian artists.

Aspiring to work with an increasing number of countries

Audience’s Question: Does your audience want to see more Asian programs?

I think so. It’s a pity because even though we are neighbors there are not a lot of Asian programs. Maybe we can work together some time?

Audience’s Question: Do you send Indonesian artists abroad?

We are the venue and we are the presenter. We hold events and so we don’t send artists abroad because we don’t manage them. We invite artists.

Audience’s Question: What about the works that you’ve created; do you tour them?

We don’t usually produce. We have produced three productions but they only toured within Indonesia. We should expand more, but it’s difficult because we hold a lot of programs and also run our own space. At the moment we can only make a program for our space. The artists usually do the production themselves.

This year we did a co-production with the Indonesia choreographer Eko Supriyanto, who is now making a new work called BALABALA. It will premiere at Salihara International Performing Arts Festival in November.

Cry Jailolo from TPAM 2015