Arts

Global fashion, remixed

Indie designers rework commercial iconography – and the business of clothing production

Music for the fight, movements for the soul

Fight-choreography in West Java is a source of cultural pride

A world of reading

Local writers help combat illiteracy in rural Banten

Teaching and remembering

The legacy of the Suharto era lingers in school history books

Angel sparks controversy

Journalists strike after West Java’s most famous newspaper ‘withdraws’ poem.

We refuse to become victims

Indonesian, Australian and Timor Leste artists collaborate

Punks, rastas and headbangers: Bali's Generation X

Quite unknown to the tourists, Balinese youth are creating a dynamic musical identity that refuses to be colonised. EMMA BAULCH joins the death thrashers for an evening of metal.

Diany Sinung: from poverty to painting

GLORIA FRYDMAN talks with successful artist Diany Sinung about her favourite subject, other women.

Two Sumatran films

The National Library of Australia now has the most comprehensive collection of Indonesian films available outside of Indonesia. Two films in this collection come from Sumatra.

Agung Kurniawan: 'My main theme is violence'

TOM PLUMMER talks with a graphic artist in Yogyakarta whose work is drawing international praise.

Poem from prison

From Sajak-sajak cinta dari balik terali (Love poems from behind bars) by Bambang Isti Nugroho, published by Penerbit Widya Mandala, Yogyakarta, 1994.

DAVID HILL and KRISHNA SEN scour the music shops. They find that foreign music is now as Indonesian as batik. From Hindi film to 'Indie' punk rock, foreign musical genres are being indigenised, and imbued with Indonesian political meaning.