Up Against the Wall 占街海报，地下过招

Posters and flyers for album drops and music events once dominated the walls and poles of major cities, and each scene cultivated its own personal visual vocabulary. These days music posters are rare, but in a few places the art form is still going strong, and Indonesian rock is one of the scenes that continues to nurture it. A loose circle of artists spanning at least three major cities produces posters in a distinctive style that references vintage comics, hallucinatory imagery, and Communist propaganda.

It’s hard to say how widespread this culture is, since Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country, and its people are spread across 17,000 islands and speak numerous languages. But several artists creating poster and flyer art show evidence of a distinct movement. They’re located in various cities, work within their own music circles, and release their work in different ways, yet the similarities are undeniable: their posters often include superheroes, religious and mythological iconography, psychedelic designs, half-tone coloring, gridded layouts, comic fonts, and bad Xerox textures, and, oddly, Latin American elements like Mexican wrestlers and pyramids.

Many of Indonesia’s most prominent music poster artists are part of Barasub, a Yogyakarta comics and illustration collective. Barasub hopes to host an exhibition or publish a zine about the flyers and posters this year. Previously, they worked with the Yogyakarta gallery Krack Studio on a similar exhibit in 2018, which also featured a residency and art program for local and international artists, helping to nurture the scene.

The late 90s and early 2000s were high points for poster art, and many artists from today’s generation cite that period as an inspiration. Just recently, a curated collection of posters from this time were released in a series of zines called Dinding Ini Milik Kami. Compiled largely from a personal collection of images of Bandung city’s poster art and printed in black and white, it’s a limited but important look into the past.

“For me, that was a golden period. But I do not want to forget the previous generations,” says Chrisna Fernand, founder of Barasub. He says the country’s flyer and poster roots stretch back to the tumultuous period of the 1950s. “Propaganda posters were being made by LEKRA, one of the Indonesian Communist Party’s art divisions. There were several outside artists who were inspirational as well, considering that many countries were experiencing war at the time.” One poster in particular that defines that era is the poster Boeng, Ajo Boeng!, which was meant to illustrate the struggle for justice by the common person. The communists were wiped out by the incumbent government in the 1965 genocide. Fernand also points to the poster art for his country’s films and novels during the 1960s, ’70s, and ‘80s as having important significance to this day.

One influential contemporary poster artist in Yogyakarta is Dwiky KA. His style, inspired by vintage Indonesian sci-fi, depicts dystopian dreamscapes in warm, earthy colors, where bodies with grotesquely exaggerated limbs writhe in unimaginable contortions. KA got his start in poster and flyer art in 2014 advertising local gigs in his hometown, Surabaya. “The posters at the time were always made with simple digital fonts and collaged objects from the internet,” he says. “I felt this was a crucial problem, because Surabaya has one of the biggest underground music cultures in Indonesia, and it was a pity to not be supported by cool visuals. Good visuals are a weapon to catch the public’s interest, no matter what the event.”

At first, he had to approach musicians, offering to make art for their shows. But by 2017 they were all reaching out to him. A number of other artists shared similar experiences. “It’s a good way for beginner illustrators in need of exposure,” says Dwiky KA. “There are only a few established illustrators who specifically make flyers and posters, but many do the occasional piece for passion projects.”

Dolby is an illustrator in Jakarta who works mainly with punk and indie pop musicians. He got his start creating flyers for gigs during college. Dolby uses the clean linework and bold colors popularized by modern digital artists. His work often has repeating patterns that sometimes resemble a tattoo flash card or wallpaper pattern.

Another notable artist is Supergunz. His style features cartoonish, bubbly characters bouncing off one another, drawn with stark colors and lines tempered by warm tints. He made his first comic when he was 12 and his first flyer for a festival when he was in high school, but he didn’t focus on poster art until after college. He mainly creates posters for rock, punk, and psychedelic bands, and he includes references to punk and metal visual cannons. It’s also overflowing with skeletons and masks, like the kind used in Mexican wrestling.Supergunz says he appreciates the Latinix culture for its intrinsic worth. “It’s just sexy,” he laughs. “It flows well with our own culture.”

Most of the work that’s printed is sold as collectibles or merchandise, but some people still bring it back to the streets. “When it’s one of the shows I’m promoting, I’ll post my work up around town,” says Ahmad Rizzali, an illustrator from Jakarta who goes by the artist name Djali. He got his start making flyer and poster art for his own parties in 2015 and now promotes others’ shows too. He’s even worked on a government campaign promoting dangdut, a local style of pop from the ‘70s. His posters stretch the traditional comic book grid format to new and unique forms using bold colors aged with yellowing effects. He also draws on comic books’ inking styles like hatching and contour lines to shade his otherworldly scenes.

Other artists making similar work include Enka Komariah, 80.slut, Mufti Priyanka, and Riandy Karuniawan.

In keeping with the DIY spirit of the music scene they often promote, artists often work with indie printing studios to bring their posters, flyers, and merchandise to life. “I always work with the printers who are my regular friends in the art scene,” Dolby says. “Some of them are so small their businesses are based out of their homes.”

“There’s a bit of a new generation of independent publishing,” adds Fernand, while listing off a number of printers in various cities, in addition to his own Barasub collective. He’s working to push the scene beyond the world of music, with posters created for even more types of events. “We’re making inroads with sequential art and illustration. Sometimes we combine it with performance art, animation, and short films, too. But the print tradition is something we need to strive to further in Indonesia, especially considering so many of our archival zines and independent publishers are gone now.”

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Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li