Hana Madness, a visual artist based in Jakarta, attended this year's international delegation programme of Unlimited Festival as one of the delegates from Indonesia.
From 7 to 11 September, Unlimited's international delegates attend this year's festival -- to get acquainted, engaged, and foster connections with the UK's disability arts sector.
We had a chance to interview Hana to hear her experience and find out about her takeaways after attending the inclusive festival.
Written by Hana Madness
What are your thoughts about the programme and festival in general?
"I still can’t believe this was my 5th time being in the UK and for the 2nd time attending Unlimited Festival. Still, with a cultural mission. As a visual artist, seeing and enjoying extraordinary art by disabled artists from various cultural backgrounds, genders, beliefs, disciplines, practices, and their diverse artistic forms makes Unlimited one of my biggest inspirations after my previous visit in 2016. Which inspired the creation of the first and largest disability arts festival in Indonesia in 2018.
The spirit and ambition of the festival celebrates disability as an identity through art, but also how Unlimited gives such a great ‘value’ to every artwork and the artists involved, and how accessibility is very well-integrated.
It’s clear how art plays a very big role in shifting public thinking and bringing about political change towards disabled-folks, both visible and invisible disabilities. Artists and practitioners from various countries with diverse backgrounds and artistic practices come to network, discuss, find solutions, explore opportunities and collaborative potential in the future.
My visit this time has increased my literacy on disability which is very closely related to accessibility, self-identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as how the disabled community celebrates their existence as part of the world that also has a positive contribution to create a disability-friendly ecosystem."
Was there any interesting programmes you were involved in as an international delegate selected by Unlimited Festival?
"I was involved in ‘Unlimited Podcast’ along with 2 other international artist delegates, called Estela Lapponi from Brazil and Wonyoung Kim from South Korea. We did the recordings one by one, where I told about who I am and my artistic practices that are closely related to mental health and disability, about my experience and the highlights of the festival, my impressions of disability arts in the UK, and a bit about the disability arts scene in Indonesia and how does my work fit into that. The podcast will be released globally by Unlimited Festival.
On a different day I got a meeting invitation from Jo Verrent (Senior Producer of Unlimited) where she introduced me with her colleague from Wakefield, which is the city where Unlimited is currently based. I showed them my physical works such as scarf, t-shirts, postcards, and stickers as requested by Jo, and told them about collaborative art projects that I did previously. The meeting discussed an opportunity to undertake an international commission project in the UK in 2023. Hopefully we can make it happen!"
Any interesting discussion or dialogue you had with fellow delegates or artists during the visit?
"I met Hayley Williams while I was enjoying her installation called 'Portrait of a Brain'. She explained to me and other visitors how to enjoy the work and what messages she wanted to convey. An installation work that uses unique color combinations that represent the colorful spectrum of each individual's cognitive.
She wants to open a public conversation if people with 'neurodivergent' have different cognitive profiles that shouldn’t be seen as a deficiency, failure or something that must be cured, but should be appreciated and celebrated as a form of individual variation. Because in reality there are still misconceptions in society that actually make them feel more isolated and experience mental health issues to an extreme level. And Hayley tries to voice her concern through this piece to fight for differences and help people to understand who they are and how they can contribute and get support.
On a different day, I attended 'Something for Nothing' panel discussion which talked the big issue of how disabled artists are often under-appreciated or even asked to do something for free. And Jo Verrent as a Senior Producer of Unlimited festival who led this discussion asked me to share my perspective based on phenomena that often occur in Indonesia and also my personal experiences working as a professional artist.
I also attended the 'Round Table Artist Talk' session which gave me the opportunity to meet some of the artists involved in the festival, one of which was John Kelly who is a musician. We sat down together with other delegates where we shared with each other about our background and practices as well as the focus of what we do in the arts and disability fields.
Apart from the ‘Unlimited Podcast’ that I did with the 2 other delegates, I also had the opportunity to talk about many things deeper with Kim (a disabled dance artist and theater) and her partner Kisub about culture and accessibility in our country. We had a strong frequency when we talked about these things, maybe because we both are from Asia. He said, he just did a perfomance in Germany and had come to Kassel to enjoy Documenta 15 where he was impressed by Ruangrupa, an Indonesian-based art collective which has taken a big role in the festival. From there, our conversation became more and more interesting.
And not to forget, this opportunity has brought me together with Kartika Jahja where we talked a lot and shared more about the perspectives and practices we are currently working on; from mental health issues, accessibility, and partisanship which I hope can create a synergy and collaboration in order to contribute to increase literacy and positive changes to the inclusive arts ecosystem in Indonesia."
