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Creative meeting place Norrm ponders form, format in 2023
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All hands: Cables and equipment cover every available surface as Norrm gets ready to broadcast its 100th radio show since it started broadcasting in 2017. The collective has broadcast 526 radio shows to date. (Courtesy of Norrm Archive) (Courtesy of Norrm Archive)
N
em>Norrm, an 'alternative media' that has journeyed nearly a decade through the creative landscape of its hometown of Bandung, contemplates its existence and format as it approaches its 10th year in January.
Stripped down to its purest form, Norrm is a publisher and broadcaster of community-fed resources compiled and released by a troupe of creative minds in Bandung, West Java. A fluid entity, it is now regarded as one of the most prominent alternative tastemakers in its hometown.
A month short of a decade since its founding and 526 radio shows later, Norrm’s creators are rethinking its existence and whether or not it should continue.
Swiss connection
In 2013, Bandung-based mutidisciplinary developer and designer Ardo Ardhana was fooling around with a website builder he had just purchased. He was fiddling with the codes for the theme to make it more presentable, according to his visual standards and coding skills at the time.
“It was a patch-up job,” Ardo snickered, speaking to The Jakarta Post on Dec. 19 at his office on Jl. Terusan Ciliwung in Bandung.
Norrm was born as a simple website meant to be what he called “alternative media”.
“I was being a know-it-all,” joked Ardo, who started the collective with his wife Nina as a reluctant partner, which was often the case with many of his endeavors.
As a communication graduate, Ardo wanted to include friends with the necessary background in the fields that Norrm was to cover: art, music, architecture, film and photography.
He then brought onboard local designer Zanun Nurangga and architect Artiandi Akbar “to curate the stream of information that comes into the platform. It could either be reblogging or publishing their writings”, Ardo recalled.
He then extended the platform’s scope by adding an online shop for selling “vinyl records and everything”, he remarked.
“Then people started noticing. One of them was Büro Destruct” said Ardo, referring to the graphic design studio based in Bern, Switzerland. The studio had noticed that Norrm was selling one of its collectible books that he happened to have two copies of.
“I don’t know how, but they managed to reach out to us,” he said.
Büro Destruct has had quite an influence on Bandung’s design scene since its inception in 1994. Knowing this, Ardo started engaging in conversations with it, until he managed to bring the designers behind the studio to Bandung with the help of indie clothing brand UNKL347, which also happened to idolize the Swiss studio.
Büro Destruct held a lecture with Norrm under the studio’s tag line, “small city, good design”, that discussed the conditions in the city. The lecture featured graphic designer, rapper and Grimloc Records cofounder Herry “Ucok” Sutresna, architecture company Shabriandi Artiandi and senior architect and managing partner Reza Achmed Nurtjahja of PT. Urbane Indonesia. The event strengthened Norrm’s footing in the local design and architecture scenes.
“From there, we started organizing [other] events,” Ardo said. The group of friends behind Norrm then held a series of events called The Upper Basement at a small, now-closed cafe off Jl. Progo, inviting DJs to play through the night.
The events were “fun, without any pressure. Until 2015”, when Ardo became absorbed with Spasial, a creative space that he founded, again with his wife, and another friend.
Bootstrapped
Ardo recalled a conversation he had with his wife about starting Spasial.
“Can I?” he had said when asking his wife for her go-ahead. He had just viewed several vacant lots for renting at a converted military warehouse on Jl. Gudang Selatan and had calculated a rental budget for a couple of lots in Warehouse B. The figure was not small.
“Are you serious? What for?” his wife Nina shot back on hearing the cost.
“Space,” Ardo replied.
“What space?” Nina asked, puzzled.
“Space! We don’t have this sort of space in Bandung,” he answered, chuckling.
“What are you going to do about the rates?” his wife challenged.
“We’ll think about it later. Can I?” Ardo repeated.
“Alright, alright,” Nina gave in, and Ardo went on to rent four adjacent lots at the warehouse.
“It was bare. We had to install our own electricity, and the flooring was uneven,” he recalled.
Fixing the floor was the first thing Ardo did. “I wanted the space to be positioned near the backyard, so it’d be easy to go out and throw up,” he said, laughing.
Norrm was put on hold throughout 2015 until it was revived in 2016, although this time it only lent its name to Spasial’s events, and no longer had a digital presence. That year, Spasial held as many as five events per week and even held three events on a single day.
Ardo initially intended Norrm to be an umbrella, with Spasial as its offline space. “But we were simply busy creating stuff back then, and the budgeting ended up overlapping,” he said.
In 2017, Ardo met Taufik “Ofri” Nofrizal and Egi Purwana.
“Ofri had been ‘haunting’ the place ever since Spasial was established,” Ardo said. “He was always around if Spasial was running an event, so I asked him to join in.” Ofri then brought his programmer friend, Egi, and proposed starting an online radio station under the Norrm brand, ultimately expanding the platform.
Why join the navy...?
“We used freeware called BUTT [broadcast using this tool] as the stream’s baseline,” Ardo said, chuckling dryly. “We synchronized the stream code and built the interface on the website.”
Norrm had no broadcasting equipment, so Ardo borrowed turntables and other necessary equipment from friends and started broadcasting from Spasial. To date, Norrm has broadcast 526 radio programs featuring an extensive range of artists, musicians, filmmakers and designers. Its operations were reminiscent of pirate radio stations in the past.
“It was tough to even obtain a tracklist from the DJs,” Ardo shrugged.
After Spasial was disbanded in 2019, Norrm moved to NuArt Sculpture Park, an art space and gallery in northern Bandung, and started Digital Age Broadcaster in collaboration with Paddygrooves, Slits and Foolish, from Australia.
“We co-streamed through the platform. But it only lasted a year. Then we moved to Grammars,” said Ardo, referring to the boutique gift shop and art space in Bandung Wetan.
However, the space Norrm occupied in Grammars lacked closeness and interaction. “It’s like an expo at a mall or something,” Ardo remarked.
“We also occupied Cupola once,” he added, referring to a local coffee shop. But the space Norrm was allotted “was a literal shack”, Ardo said, his eyes lighting up as he gestured with his arms to indicate the size of the space. “The spirit was to get to know people, to talk, like, ‘Hey man, if you have some time to spare, let’s talk.’ Like that.”
So, he and Ofri tried to dig down and search for their core aim, and decided to create an offline space. “Maybe in August or September next year,” added Ardo.
Despite the plan, Ardo was still wondering if he should disband Norrm, even as recently as “just two weeks ago”. “We’re really what you call an ‘in between,’” he said, noting that he believed the current model was unsustainable.
“If we’re going to continue like this, it’d be better to close up shop,” Ardo recalled thinking. But Nina didn’t and gave him a pep talk, with a dose of reality.
“’Still, you need to think about what’s next,’” Ardo said, mimicking his wife’s pertinent words as Norrm gets ready to turn 10 in January 2023.
