HANDY HERMANSYAH, a young artist born in Kudus, East Java, April 17, 1978, never forgets one of the worst experiences of his life: Thursday, March 27, 2002, he fell from a motorbike due to the deteriorating condition of the street of Pasteur, Bandung, which was full of holes. He was on his way home, riding with Arief Tousiga, his best friend from the time when he was studying at the Studio of Sculpture, Faculty of Art and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology. Handy had bruises and pain all over his body because of that accident. He was annoyed and angry, but did not know how and to whom he should express his anger.
Handy was an artist of the quiet kind. He often keeps all his thoughts to himself, to express them later in his sculptures and paintings. He talked only with Arief Tousiga about the street holes that had annoyed him. They started discussing about the matter and initiated an art project that was related to the streets, as a vital public facility in an urban life such as in Bandung. The experience of having an accident caused by the street holes became their point of departure. At the time, Handy had a simple idea: How to create something to prevent others from experiencing the same misfortune as he did.
Handy thought of making signs warning about the danger of the street holes. Having been academically trained as a sculptor, Handy initially wished to create street signs in the form of three dimensional objects that could later be installed on the street. He cancelled the plan, however, because he eventually thought of it as “extravagant” and it might even disrupt the smooth functioning of the streets. The signs must, in any case, be as simple as possible, yet remaining effective, and their primary function must not be disturbed.
Handy finally decided to use white wall-paint to create the signs. He chose wall paint because it is cheap, easy to dry and to carry around, and does not need specific procedures to employ. For this project, Handy indeed needed materials that were practical and easy to carry, because he wanted to involve elements of performance art by directly going to the streets.
It was Tuesday, April 1, 2002. Around noon, precisely at the time when the streets in Bandung were full of traffic, Handy started his performance act at the Juanda–Cikapayang–Surapati crossroad. Pushing a cart full of paint cans and brushes, he went along the streets of Bandung and checked their conditions. He then marked the street holes he found, by painting around their circumferences. His acts naturally drew a lot of attention. Marking street holes is not a normal thing to do, even for the urban planning officials at the regional government.
From around the area of Juanda and Tirtayasa, Handy continued his performance act along Cikapayang Street. This was certainly not without its risks. The heavy traffic and the attitude of the people on the road (especially the drivers of public transportation vehicles) who tended to be intolerant, forced Handy to employ certain strategies to avoid the cars that kept on speeding although Handy had installed the safety triangle around the street holes he was working on. Because the street holes were everywhere—they were, of course, randomly placed: at the side of the road, in the middle of it—Handy often received harsh criticism by drivers who thought that their travels had been hindered. All the stages in Handy’s performance act had been documented and are now stored in a video format and in photography.
The interesting part of Handy’s art project was that it managed to attract the sympathy and attention of people who happened to be around. Several sidewalk vendors, who were first astonished to see what Handy was doing, sought information about the goal of this project. Handy explained it thoroughly, making sure that they understood. Some of them then volunteered to help manage the traffic as Handy did his project. Some teenagers who happened to be around also helped by mixing the paints or painting the circumferences of the holes. At this level, Handy’s action succeeded in creating an awareness among the people about his concerns.
Handy project went on for about a week and continued along Dago Pakar, Tubagus Ismail, Cikutra, and Taman Sari. He used up tens of white wall paints, contributed by the artist Sunaryo, one of his lecturers at the Studio of Sculpture. A national newspaper covered his project, saying that this was an artist expressing his concerns about the urban environment—notwithstanding the fact that the signs he created did not last long.
Frino Barianciannur, a video artist from Bandung who documented this project, interviewed and asked people’s opinions about the street holes. Some vendors of secondhand objects on Cikapayang Street, who were first surprised with Handy’s project, said that they were disappointed by the condition of the street, which had been heavily damaged. One of the reasons why they were annoyed was because there would be puddles after a rain, and vehicles that passed over these murky puddles often incidentally splashed the water and made their sales dirty, or people who passed by could be spattered. Through the interview, these vendors voiced their aspirations to the city government about the unmanaged street facilities of Bandung.
When seeing such a direct action in a public space, like what Handy had done, we are faced with the latent question of: Does this deserved to be called an art work or art project? Can it be called ‘art’ because the one doing it was an artist (a sculptor)? This is a truly problematic question, bearing in mind that there are myriad understandings about the definition of ‘art’ that are still being debated. In the context of Indonesian art, the history of art project/action/work in the public space goes back to the 1970s, and had even been discussed often as a part of the established art developments. During the 1990s, such art tendency strengthened, along with the blooming sociopolitical themes.
Handy’s act as a project of public art must certainly be measured using the parameters about how far the project could create, simultaneously and proportionally, some social and artistic awareness. Handy managed to arouse some social awareness by conducting a provocative, direct, and surprising act in public spaces. The streets in Bandung at the time had indeed been neglected due to the megaproject of the Pasupati Road, which at the time gained priority. This indicated that cities such as Bandung have not really been managing their public facilities.
If its social function can be considered as successful, what about the artistic content of such project? I think, to view this project as an ‘art project’, we should naturally use different measurements regarding the artistic content, compared to the measurements we normally use to view art works of other kinds. The way Handy marked the circumferences of the street holes indicated some thorough considerations and an interesting approach in the process of sign productions, although the artistic content there was not significant (and neither was it relevant). Therefore, I have no doubts that the “Street Holes” project had been a successful public-art project.
Bandung, April 2007
Translated by Rani Elsanti
AGUNG HUJATNIKAJENONG is born in Tasikmalaya, January 9, 1976. Since 2001, he has been working as the curator at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space. Besides teaching at the Faculty of Art and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology, Agung Hujatnikajennong also writes prolifically; his art reviews have been published in various journals and mass media.
HANDY HERMANSYAH was born in Kudus in 1978 and now lives and works in Bandung. He used to bike and walk, but not anymore. Now he stays mainly in his studio. His street holes project is his only performance art he has done in the public space. Now he is seriously creating sculptures from ephemeral materials such as vegetables, then capturing them in other media, turning them into longer-lasting works. An example of this is the works he made during his residence project, Landing Soon 3, at the Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta, 2007.
