Session Name: Politics, Culture, and Representation in Indonesia
Building People's Political Awareness: LEKRA Woodcut Print Art And Transnationalism Agenda in 1960-1965
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
09:00 – 10:45 (GMT+7)
Paper Abstract: Woodcut print in the early 20th century was known as a leftist media to introduce unequal reality since Kathe Kollwitz brought this art with a realism aspect. Woodcut printing is rapidly entering the arena of the Asian leftist, including in Indonesia. The post-independence era marks the evolution of art in Indonesia, when many art communities established to support the revolution and many of them pick realism as the main point of national identity. One art that follows this idea is woodcut prints. It is undeniable that woodcut print is an art that is more specialized than other fine arts, because it can be an art or propaganda, and it can be duplicated and spread widely in society. Because of that, woodcut prints became part of radical culture especially in the 1960's and ruined after 1965. Woodcut prints have an important position in LEKRA (People’s Culture Institute) and Harian Rakjat newspaper, which is that organization is a part of Indonesia Communist Party (PKI). Sadly, after the 1965s, woodcut prints lost the revolutionary spirit, and changed into abstract art because the art was owned by the ‘Culture Manifest (Manikebu)’ art community – the opposition of LEKRA. This paper will present about woodcut prints' roles to building people’s political awareness with revolutionary locality aspect, and probably about transnationalism built by the Asian-African-Latin American fraternity. This paper also used historical methodology, such as heuristic, critique, verification, interpretation, and historiography to build a critical history paper framework.
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