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Taring Padi: Amplifying voices through zine
It only takes bold ideas and a photocopier for Yogyakarta-based art collective Taring Padi to highlight people’s critical thoughts and creative ideas through its zine.
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True voice of the masses: Taring Padi's zine "Terompet Rakyat" was created as a response to many issues surrounding the community, both local and international. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
W
hen you’re a writer trying to express your ideas and opinions, chances are you’ll have to tone down your words or even abandon your ideas if you want to make it through mainstream publishers.
None of that is an issue if you decide to take the independent route. Zines, for example, can cover all sorts of topics and are usually distributed by underground groups that, for one reason or another, avoid the attention afforded to mainstream media.
One such group is Yogyakarta-based art collective Taring Padi. Founded in 1998 after the fall of Soeharto’s New Order regime, the group is primarily known for its politically loaded messages of social justice, expressed through posters made using its signature woodcut technique.
Alongside posters and banners, Taring Padi also communicates its ideas through a monthly zine titled Terompet Rakyat (People’s Trumpet). First published in 1999, the zine is a monthly staple of the group’s response to issues both local and international.
Taring Padi cofounder Hestu A. Nugroho said zines were common in Western countries, noting that they were generally created by those in the music scene or those who were labelled by society as “radical and provocative”.
“It means that these groups can be said to be ‘antimainstream’, in the sense that they are trying to counter the mainstream,” Hestu told The Jakarta Post on the last weekend of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN) exhibition “Dunia Dalam Berita”, which featured Taring Padi’s posters and banners.
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