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span class="inline inline-left">Fleeting: This work by HereHere, a renowned Yogyakarta street artist, calls for attention to the voices of the people. Courtesy of urbancult.net“Those kids are punks. They draw skulls on their paintings,” said a newspaper vendor to Agung Geger who was doing his regular street art photography round on Yogyakarta’s streets.

The 35-year-old man, who is usually called Geger, takes photographs of street art and then uploads them to the Internet. He also sometimes speaks with people on the street about the art that surrounds them.

Talking about a large and colorful mural across the street, the vendor told Geger he didn’t get the message, but skulls were certainly a “punk” symbol. Geger then published the transcript of this discussion in Javanese on urbancult.net, a website he recently launched with others in order to provide new perspectives on street culture.

Geger knows Love Hate Love, the creator of the mural discussed. And he does not consider the street artist a punk. “But I preferred not to interfere because this kind of discussion is a way to show to artists the reactions of the audience,” he says.

“For me, street art is like an open gallery. Everybody from sellers at the market and pedicab drivers to students can see street art. They don’t need to go to a gallery and pay money dressed in a suit. We can just see and we can be curators,” Geger explains.

The choice to paint on a wall instead of paper is not a neutral one. Street art is characterized by a continuous renewal of the paintings. Geger says there are no hard feelings when one’s work is covered by a new one; it is the normal flow of the street.

In the peaceful environment of Yogyakarta street art, Geger thought it was worth it to conserve some of the marks of this short-lived cultural inheritance. “I started to take pictures, because I noticed that there is no specific institution that organizes or references street art,” Geger says. He adds that he doesn’t have specific photography skills, he does it because he “like[s] it. A lot.”

He first started uploading his pictures of street art on his Facebook account. Last November, Andreas Siagian contacted Geger. The general public should be able to access these pictures, Andreas said. They started to develop a website that listed all the works of street art in Yoygakarta. Budi Prakora joined the project as a programmer. The three men did know each other before, but they are barely able to remember precisely how they met, as if this long-term friendship naturally led them to work together. Thus, the urbancult.net team was formed.

More than 30 pages of the website are filled with pictures of murals, stencils and graffiti all referenced under a timeline with artist names. Related remarks and links to artist blogs or websites are also present. The three men even launched a street art map processed by Google Map.

None of urbancult.net’s creators is an artist. And their vision for the website is nurtured by this status. “Our position toward street art is as citizens not as artists. Geger’s work is a response to what artists do in public places,” Andreas explains. “On urbancult.net, the picture’s title is not the title of the work of art itself. We describe what we see visually as a street audience. We complement the artist’s initiative,” he adds.

The project has been cheered by the street artist community. Geger was invited to present at the last
Underworld exhibition, an important meeting of the art scene in Yogyakarta.

The team quickly realized they had to adjust their project to the fast pace of the street art world. Geger was sometimes called the same night by two or three artists to document their work. “We realized it was impossible for us to document all the street art in the city. We made a submission form for artists to submit pictures of their work. We want to make them aware it is important for them to document it,” Andreas explains.

Anti Tank (street artists are called by their artist name in this article) believes his responsibility is increased by the website. “I have always felt responsible for my work. Since they hunt for it, I push myself to do the best,” he explains.

Anti Tank is among the artists whose proficiency and productivity on Yogyakarta walls make them impossible to miss on urbancult.net. In daily life, only a few could imagine that this young man in a ski cap covers walls with denunciatory posters. “Old Party, New Party,” he writes under a cigar-smoking skull (once again) on one of his last pieces.

Anti Tank’s political work adheres to urbancult.net’s wish to spread street art culture to the general public. He uses posters because people can download them from his blog and print them. “It is very accessible,” he says and he adds that he chose it because he “can’t draw like HereHere [another famous street artist of Yogyakarta]”. He laughs.

Documented: A piece by Love Hate Love is one of the works documented on Geger’s website for street art in Yogyakarta. Courtesy of urbancult.netThis new venue for street art dissemination hasn’t gone unnoticed among artists from other parts of Java, who are submitting their work in ever greater numbers. The Indonesia-based street art mapping of urbancult.net informs that 35 street art works are included from the Jakarta region and 55 from Yogyakarta. Since Andreas moved to Bogor, he also takes pictures in Jakarta, Bogor and Bandung.

The French street artist ~1escV? (an acronym for “un escargot vide”, meaning “an empty snail”) first went to Yogyakarta two years ago as the first stop in a long artistic trip around Asia. Now back in the city, he considers urbancult.net among the positive evolutions that has occurred since he left. According to him, one of the main strengths of the project is that it remains locally based.

~1escV? compares Yogyakarta to Berlin, the German capital famous for its vivid alternative art scene. “When I first came here, I thought it was the Berlin of Asia. But when I went back to Berlin, I felt it was really cold. There are not as many colorful characters like in Yogyakarta,” he says, smiling.

This Indonesian city that is beating Berlin, according to the French artist, is already decorated with painted murals advertising the 2012 Biennial next July, the biggest street artist gathering of the year.

It is an event that urbancult.net will be sure to document.