Graffiti Culture Embryo

In the rapid development of media will produce many products in it, in an area will have a tendency to imitate what the community sees, hears, feels or so on. One of the products that flourish is culture, urban culture is one of them, in big cities in Indonesia such as Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Malang and so on we will very easily capture these symptoms, symptoms of the spread of urban culture that directly or indirectly we also do it, not only stopping at urban culture itself. Urban culture itself has many branches of products within it, from fine arts there is graffiti, from dance there is break dance and so on.

In the free parking exhibition held at Poharin art space, we will also be presented and invited to be involved in the practice of this urban cultural product, Graffiti is apparently a medium to channel talents and interests in accordance with urban culture, giving color to the corners of the city, although in practice graffiti is an illegal act, but we cannot close our eyes that graffiti provides another color in an area.

Society and culture are interdependent, society cannot be a functional unit without culture and vice versa1. Then when a city already has many works in it, the next tendency is that the perpetrators who do the graffiti will naturally group and create a group/crew/community/etc. When there are many graffiti groups in adjacent territories, of course, it will cause friction. That’s the natural flow that happens, and it should happen.
The friction that arises is not something that can be connoted negatively. The friction that occurs can be positive, for example when a group has been able to make graffiti works with more achievements than other groups, then other groups will compete to catch up to achieve the same achievements or even exceed other groups. It is a beautiful thing that we imagine and happen in graffiti culture in Indonesia, but there are also things that are not fun and that is the reality that happens.

To preserve its continuity, living things have two things, namely to become immortal or reproduce, it is impossible to become immortal so the sensible thing is to reproduce but here the right word is regeneration, where there must be rejuvenation of cultural actors as the succesor of the culture.
The venue for the graffiti exhibition this time is Malang, one of the big cities in Indonesia where the graffiti culture is growing rapidly, in the last 5 years we can see from the graffiti in the city that continues to grow. The number of perpetrators is also not static but continues to grow. So we can conclude that the city of Malang is a fertile city for graffiti growth.

All aspects have been fulfilled here for the sustainability of graffiti culture in this poor city, therefore the next thing to do is a good regeneration process, if living things reproduce to pass on information and experiences that have been obtained in their mass life through dna, then in the sustainability of a new embryo culture which is usually called a beginner must also be shared knowledge and experience that has been obtained and done by his seniors, so the sustainability of graffiti culture that occurs especially in Malang will continue to grow and not in a static position, where it will continue to experience development.
Adaptation is often interpreted as a process that connects the cultural system with its environment, now it is clear that it is impossible to think of adaptation without reference to an environment2. So the adaptive process that must be carried out by new actors presumably gets a positive response from actors who have first turned the wheel of graffiti in this unfortunate city, the process of channeling knowledge and experience must be done, one of which is through the gathering event in this free parking event. This kind of event in the future will have a positive impact and must be preserved as an effort to maintain the sustainability of graffiti itself.

Hopefully in this free parking event there will be a lot of knowledge and experience gained and shared, success as for graffiti actors in the city of Malang. el graffiti en vivo !!!

1 Linton, Ralph. The Study Of Man (Bandung, 1984), 195
2 Kaplan, David – Manners A, Robert. Teori Budaya (Yogyakarta, 2012), 112

  • Written for the Bebas Parkit exhibition, visual art exhibition based by street artwork. 
  • In 16-18  Agustus 2015
  • At Poharin Art Space Malang

Leave a comment

Designed by Sikutskido

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started