Bahasa Julian Abraham 'Togar'
The practice of Julian Abraham ‘Togar’ is hard to reduce to a single material, methodology or position within a national art scene. This resistance to categorisation stems from the multiplicity of issues he addresses and the diverse materials and ways of working he inhabits. His art practice includes long-term projects like the Jatiwangi Cup in which the artist, together with communities in the Jatiwangi area, renowned for its roof tile factories, established an annual bodybuilding contest celebrating bodies sculpted by labour. This ‘competition’ tries to create a culture of solidarity between local workers, factories and family businesses, finding new collective models of working and enabling this ailing traditional economy to survive. His ongoing work Diabethanol, recently shown in the 2018 Biennale of Sydney, is a faux start-up business for converting the urine of diabetics—a major health issue in Indonesia—into an alternative form of bio-fuel. The ironic critique of global bio-politics inherent in this project is based on real processes/technologies developed by the artist, who is a skilled citizen scientist and DIY engineer.
Perhaps the most prominent and recurrent concern in Togar’s practice is the physical, technological and social-historical aspects of sound; present both as medium and issue. Tolerating the intolerance 2018 is a sound sculpture whose materiality contains a sharp cultural critique. The whirring sound of a roof ventilator dome driven by a motor is ever present, programmed for brief moments of stillness in a five-minute cycle. This low-level noise is punctuated intermittently by the highly disruptive sound of feedback, radiating from the microphone and megaphone installed directly facing each other on either side of the rotating dome; together they make an echo chamber. There is no external sonic source in this work, it is literally ‘speaking and listening to itself’.1
Tolerating the intolerance evolves from an understanding of sound as one of the key contentions between people and communities in an agonistic public sphere. In Indonesia, where noise regulation does not exist on a legislative level, the battle for the soundscape is highly politicised. The particular style of roof ventilator dome used by Togar is visually synonymous with masjids—small local mosques. As such, this noisy object contains a targeted critique of the bodies of power that govern the polyphonic public spaces of Indonesia, in times marked by the increasing dominance and conservatism of Islam in the country.
Sanne Oorthuizen and Alec Steadman
- Julian Abraham ‘Togar’, artist statement, at julianabraham.net, accessed 14 December 2018.
