Milisifilem Collective held an open studio entitled Pameran Drawing “Apa Kau Lihat Iskandar?” or Drawing Exhibition “Do You See Iskandar?” on November 18-24 2018, at Forum Lenteng, Jakarta. This exhibition is one of the outputs from a series of film production learning activities through the practice of visual experimentation initiated by Forum Lenteng since September 2017 on the Milisifilem platform. The event exhibited 88 images (using colored pencils on a 21 x 29.7 cm paper) made by 12 artists, including Afrian Purnama, Anggraeini Widhiasih, Dhanurendra Pandji, Dhuha Ramadhani, Luthfan Nur Rochman, Maria Silalahi, Manshur Zikri, Pingkan Polla, Prashasti W. Putri, Robby Ocktavian, Wahyu Budiman Dasta, and Yuki Aditya. All the drawings on display are the results of a study of a film by The Father of Indonesian Cinema, Usmar Ismail, entitled After the Curfew (1954). The title of the exhibition, “Do You See Iskandar?” was taken from one of the dialogues in the film After the Curfew which tells the inner contemplation of a former revolutionary warrior who tried to adapt himself into the post-revolutionary society. Produced as a black-and-white film in the decade of the rise of national cinema, After the Curfew is considered as one of the classic Indonesian films that successfully represented the idea of art as a means of expression and aesthetics, as well as criticism of the dynamics of the film industry at that time. In this exhibition, the artists tried to interpret the aesthetic aspects of Usmar in constructing his ideological ideas about Indonesian into a romance-laden with social, economic and political criticism. The interpretation is in the form of deconstruction of scenes and even deformation of forms that imagine how Usmar’s point of view when framing a reality through cinematic construction. Made with colored media, these drawings, in other words, also become an effort to expand the repertoire of the film itself, as well as a new contextualization in reading the background of the 1950s society based on the preferences of the artists who commonly grew up in the post-The Reformasi of 1998 era. As a collective of film production study that puts the history of art and media as its knowledge base and applies it experimentally to a collaborative work, Milisifilem Collective explores visual production practices, both technically and in contexts related to current socio-cultural issues. The exploration examines various possibilities from the medium and art theory and targets various outputs. Beforehand, Milisifilem Collective had produced five short films in the framework of the Black and White Film Project, a collaboration between Forum Lenteng and the Center for Film Development of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia. This collective also participates in the Indonesia Contemporary Art and Design (ICAD) 2018: Story; they exhibited 25 drawing works that framed the issues in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, with charcoal on various sizes of paper as its medium. The exhibition is the next step of this collectives to share experiences with the community regarding alternative approaches in developing the idea of art as one of the educational means and methods for building awareness of cultural activism. The exhibition is open to the public and is free. * Opening: November 18th, 2018, 16.00 GMT+7 Daily Exhibition: November 19th – 24th, 2018, 13.00 – 21.00 GMT+7 Year Jakarta, Indonesia
2018
Drawing Exhibition: “Apa Kau Lihat Iskandar?”
