Gatari Kusuma
Gatari Surya Kusuma, called Gatari, is a writer, curator based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. After graduating from the Department of Photography at the Indonesian Institute of the Art in 2016 (BA), she has been developing and sharpening her collectivity practices with her two collectives, doing action research and deepened critical pedagogy with KUNCI Study Forum & Collective and the School of Improper Education. In addition to this, she also does artistic production and ethnographic research related to food the Bakudapan Food Study Group. For BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice, her research proposal is titled “Tools for Open-Ended Assemblages, Not a Magical Machine” and proposes to work and research the spirit of the collective in the context of solidarity/groups created under the spirit of socio-ecological justice. While talking about ecological struggle, the spirits are in a liminal space (relation between human and their land). They could not be measured in capital logic because they are coming before capitalism started. But, how to redistribute the immaterial and personal things such as spirit in order to aim for preservation? Meanwhile, this spirit is found in a spectral infrastructure that is undecidable and uncounted in numbers. Currently, Gatari is organizing a socio-ecological justice forum and study group with Struggle for Sovereignty. Other than that, she is also using the form of workshop or organizing events as one of her forms of research presentation, such as Gulung Tukar art exhibition and festival in Tulungagung, East Java, Indonesia. For now, she is living and working between Yogyakarta and Jakarta, and is part of the GUDsel at Gudskul, Jakarta, in the Fellowship of Situated Practice.