Annina Ocken
Annina Ocken
E-Mail: annina.ocken@scm.uni-halle.de
Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Christoph Brumann
Projekt: Contemporary art in Indonesia – a case study of everyday life in the Yogyakarta art scene
The proposed PhD project on “Contemporary art in Indonesia – a case study of everyday life in the Yogyakarta art scene” aims to detail the understanding of the art scene in Yogyakarta – the main art and cultural node of Indonesia. To that end, 12 months of ethnographic research is planned in the city of Yogyakarta, a district of the semi-autonomous region of Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta (DIY), "Yogyakarta Special Region".
The puzzle is to answer the question how the internationalisation of contemporary art challenges and changes contemporary Art in Yogyakarta. In doing so I will focus primarily on individual artists, to give a grassroots perspective of the current development and the transformation of art in Indonesia' and thus, provide a deep insight into the intersection of contemporary Indonesian art in Yogyakarta. During the fieldwork I will conduct the methods of participant observations, writing fieldnotes and informal interviews. The methods will constantly narrow down my research questions and allow me to frame questions for semi-structured interviews with experts.
This ethnography will not only provide insights into one of the rising art centres of the world but also contribute to two bodies of existing scholarship within anthropology. The first contribution will provide a theoretical conceptualisation of the projects drawn from anthropological literature helpful in understanding local and global art worlds and its actors. Secondly, it will moreover contribute to the growing field of Southeast Asian Studies, specifically to the ongoing construction of Southeast Asian art history from a social anthropological perspective.