The opening night of our twenty-fifth year features a touring showcase of music and video works from Indonesia represented by the Yes No Wave Music label, run by interdisciplinary artist and producer Wok the Rock. The tour will feature live performances by Gabber Modus Operandi and Rani Jambak, and video works by Natasha Tontey and Riar Rizaldi. Tickets available now.
Based in the Javanese cultural hub Yogyakarta, Yes No Wave Music is an online label and platform to nurture Indonesian artists and promote their activities internationally. Founded by Wok the Rock in 2007, the label is run with a DIY ethos to build a post-capitalist alternative to music industry norms. All music on the label is free to download, distribute, and even remix, reflecting the Indonesian social value of sharing communal resources, and the necessity for artists to develop their activities in spite of nominal government support and funding. In 2010, Wok and Timothy O’Donoghue initiated the monthly concert series Yes No Club traveling throughout Southeast Asia and beyond. He subsequently co-curated Nusasonic in 2018-2022. These efforts fostered the international success of artists such as Senyawa, Gabber Modus Operandi, Raja Kirik, and Asep Nayak.
Since moving to Yogyakarta to study graphic design as a teenager, Wok’s cultural activism has continued to grow over the past two decades. He co-founded art space Ruang MES 56, curated the Biennale Jogja XIII in 2015, and organized numerous community art projects. This informs his unique interdisciplinary practice of crossing boundaries of music and visual art.
Curated by Aki Onda and Wok the Rock.
About the Artists
Gabber Modus Operandi is the duo of DJ/producer Kasimyn and artist/fashion designer Ican Harem, based in Bali, Indonesia. The group was founded following a fad staging at an underground punk concert in Denpasar, Indonesia. Their experimentation began with an obsession for the energy and intensity of Jathilan, gabber, dangdut koplo, ebeg, funkot, Chicago footwork, grindcore, and noise dance cultures, and the community parties in Indonesia’s smaller cities.
Rani Jambak is a composer, producer, and vocalist of Minangkabau descent from Medan, Indonesia. Through electronic music and soundscapes, Jambak’s work explores ecology, identity, and the socio-cultural relationship between humans and their ancestors. Her practice has also involved collaborating with Indonesian environmental organizations PPLH Borok and Orangutan Haven on ecological sound projects.
Natasha Tontey is an artist based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Her artistic practice predominantly explores the fictional accounts of the history and myths surrounding “manufactured fear.” Working across digital animation, performance, and installation, she observes the possibilities of alternative futures projected from outcast entities and beings beyond the perspectives of major institutions. Tontey is a fellow for Human Machine at the Junge Akademie through Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
Riar Rizaldi is an artist and filmmaker born in Bandung, Indonesia. He works predominantly with moving images and sound, both in the black-box of cinema settings and installations within gallery contexts. His artistic practice focuses on the relationship between capital and technology, and labour and nature, as well as worldviews, genre cinema, and theoretical fiction.
About the Curators
Wok The Rock is an artist, curator, music producer, and cultural activist born in Madiun, Indonesia, and based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Working across the fields of contemporary art, design, and underground music, Wok’s practice focuses on experimenting with collective space. In addition to running the non-profit online label Yes No Wave Music, Wok curates the experimental music concert series Yes No Klub, is a member of the Yogyakarta-based artist collective Ruang MES 56, and is a founder of the Indonesia Netaudio Forum.
Aki Onda is an artist, composer, performer, and curator based in Mito, Japan, and is currently Curator-at-Large at Western Front, Vancouver. Their works are often catalyzed by and structured around memories—personal, collective, and historical. Crossing genres and disciplines, they have been active internationally in art, film, music and performance.
Presented in partnership by send + receive, Winnipeg; Music Gallery, Toronto; Debaser, Ottawa; Art in the Margins, Montréal; and Western Front, Vancouver, with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION
Entrance to the Gallery is by the side door, accessed by Gomez Street, with a ramp into the main gallery. The door is not power assisted but a volunteer will be working the door.
The gallery has a cement floor that is flat. The gallery and main floor bathroom are accessible to wheelchair users. The second level of the exhibition space is not accessible by wheelchair, having eleven steps from the main floor up to the second floor.
There are two gender neutral, single occupant bathrooms upstairs and one gender neutral, single occupant wheelchair accessible washroom on the main floor of the gallery.
This evening’s performances involve the use of fog machine.
Masking is recommended and masks will be provided at the door.