Events

Indonesia has a rich and distinctive queer* history. This history encompasses diverse time periods, practices, expressions, categories, individuals, and relations. Queer communities have had an important relationship to national belonging and alternative visions of social life before and after Indonesian independence from Dutch colonial rule in 1945. These queer histories are Indonesian, and they have often emerged at the intersection of forms of cross-cultural exchange, borrowing, and translation. Indonesian queer history is a living, constantly shifting testament to the strength, vitality, and creativity of communities who use a very wide range of terms to describe themselves and one another.

This forum will reflect on this history to engage with a range of voices who are working in Indonesia and with the work of the Queer Indonesia Archive (QIA). Founded in 2019 as a digital archiving project committed to the collection, preservation and celebration of material reflecting the lives and experiences of queer Indonesia, the archive is community-led and run. In the projects short history it has collected a range of materials that reflect the diversity of queer Indonesia, including zines, oral histories, internet websites, letters, and photographs. QIA has curated accessible online exhibitions about queer Jakarta in the 1990s, community publications, and the history of HIV and AIDS. This forum coincides with the inaugural visit of QIA to the Australian Queer Archive, which was founded in 1978.

The forum seeks to explore the ethical, political, and practical components of queer archives specifically within the Indonesian context. The discussion invites audiences to consider how the collection, accessibility and celebration of community histories shape ideas of belonging, identity, nation and self. These conversations will take a special focus on recent QIA collection projects; Jakarta queer women histories; community responses to HIV; and the mapping of gay, lesbian and waria organisations.

Participants include:
Harits Paramasatya
Beau Newham
Sidhi Vhisatya
Karina
Wulan Dirgantoro
Benjamin Hegarty

Hosted by:
Annisa Beta

*QIA uses queer as a broad and inclusive umbrella term to indicate our interest in objects that reflect the experience of all diverse sexualities, genders and gender expressions deemed non normative by current dominant heteronormative discourses in Indonesia. The term does not adequately capture either the gender or sexual diversity that exists across Indonesia, nor the role this diversity has played in the numerous cultures across the archipelago.

We hope this forumn invites further exploration and interrogation of the use of both queer, and LGBTIQ+ as terminology for Indonesian communities, and allow some insight into the creative and expansive use of language and identity markers throughout Indonesian queer communities.