Ceramic Music Festival, 2015
video 3’42’’
Hanyaterra, 2011
video 11’20’’
 

The Hanyaterra group is the musical component of the Jatiwangi art Factory collective from West Java in Indonesia. ‘Earth alone’, its name, is both the musicians’ home area and the clay extracted there for traditional construction, which today is the base of the region’s industry. The Ceramic Music Festival was organized in reference to the ceramic heritage. Hanyaterra’s musical instruments are made of clay and designed to make unusual sounds. At one of the annual festivals, after months of rehearsals by various communities and age groups from sixteen local villages, a collective musical performance by over 5,000 people took place. Hanyaterra use audio activity, recordings and concerts to tell about the soil, the earth, clay and mud—in Indonesian, they are all encompassed in the single word Tanah. The musicians call themselves young villagers who treat playing ceramic music as a movement for working out new regional cultural strategies. They also perform outside Indonesia. Tedi, the group’s leader, recently won a prestigious One Beat residency for musicians in the United States, and last year represented the Jatiwangi art Factory at an artistic communities’ gathering at the Fabrikken for Kunst & Design in Copenhagen. Hanyaterra have played concerts in Poland and the Netherlands, and are shortly planning an artistic trip to Zimbabwe.

Jatiwangi Art Factory (Indonesia)

Founded on September 27th, 2005, JaF is a not-for-profit organization that focuses on the discourses of local rural life through arts and cultural activities such as festivals, performances, visual art, music, video, ceramics, exhibitions, artists in residencies, monthly discussions, radio broadcasts, and education. Since 2008, JaF collaborates with the Jatisura Village Government in doing research and experiments to connect people using contemporary participatory techniques within the arts.