On the streets: youth street art in Yogyakarta as a contemporary assemblage

Street art proliferates on the walls of the city of Yogyakarta as it does in cities throughout the world. Yet despite its visual prominence, street art practices of young people are a neglected area of research, particularly in Asian contexts. Street art is an ephemeral, subversive and subaltern creative practice which sits outside the conventional contemporary art world and conventional art spaces. Although standard techniques of painting, stencil art, poster art, installation, sculpture, video projection and yarn bombing appear in most cities, nevertheless local conditions and contexts shape street art and its creative practices. Thus, street art can become an essential vehicle for socio-political discourses of resistance. This thesis investigates the street art practices of young street artists in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The thesis suggests that existing art theories and structuralist theorising in social science research are ill-equipped to capture the multiplicities involved in the street artworld. A theoretical framework based on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, in particular, the notion of assemblage, provided an avenue of interpretation into the sophisticated, interconnected creative practices of the young street artists. The concept of the rhizome provided a descriptive conceptual language to consider the creative nomadic practice and formed the basis of the innovative analytical approach developed for this thesis – rhizoanalysis. The assemblage approach allowed concomitant reflections on the historical, geographical and cultural contexts which impact directly on the initiation, character and evolution of youth practices. The result is an in-depth ethnographic study using the qualitative methods of observation, interviews and nongkrong – a local, informal way of ‘hanging out’. The technique of rhizoanalysis was also taken up and adapted for the cultural context. The methodological approach combined with the conceptual lens of Deleuze and Guattari revealed the distinctive collective creative practices operating in Yogyakarta. The analysis of data generated the innovative concepts of collective individualism and rebel imaginings. Culturally embedded practices of collectivity which encompass both communitarian cultures and the reflexive project of the self, define collective individualism. This collectivist and individualist approach was identified to be at the centre of creative practice for these young people. It was found that collective individualism facilitated the revolutionary flows of desire through the operation of their rebel imaginings. Rebel imaginings intensified the connection with audiences, political discourses and the wider artworld. This thesis contributes to the academic literature on street art and also to our knowledge about the practices of creative collectivity undertaken by young Indonesians.