Dr Sean Martin-Iverson

Drawing on my research into the hardcore punk scene in Bandung, Indonesia, I argue for the conceptual and social significance of 'the underground' as a form of radical social imagination that continues to creatively reshape urban life in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia. I adopt a politics of value approach to understand the underground as a cultural terrain across which multiple struggles over value take place, as well as the role of hardcore punk and other underground scenes in the transformation of creative work, urban space, cultural identities, and political movements. These underground scenes can be understood as sites of precarious, creative autonomy won through struggles over value, in the context of wider processes of class recomposition, urbanization, and generational change. Such scenes constitute shifting communities of creative workers, political activists and urban youth struggling for autonomy. Underground scenes also both contribute to and contest neoliberal forms of urban development, as in the conflicts and compromises associated with the implementation of 'Creative City' policies in Bandung. In doing so, these scenes draw on practices from global underground networks and local informal economies to develop new ways of organizing cultural production. Thus, I argue that the evidence from Bandung demonstrates that there remains significant value in the concept of 'the underground' for understanding the interfaces of cultural production, spatial organization, and political struggle in urban Southeast Asia.

In this article I examine the contested and equivocal role of ‘straight edge’ as a subcultural identity and lifestyle practice within the Indonesian DIY hardcore punk scene. Associated with a personal commitment to abstain from alcohol and drug use, straight edge was also understood by many in the Indonesian scene as a ‘positive punk’ movement for both self-transformation and progressive social change, reclaiming an authentic punk philosophy of autonomy and community from the ‘negative’ performance of transgressive rebellion. However, as the scene became entangled in both neo-liberal processes of commercialization and a resurgence of Islamic conservatism, many of those committed to positive punk began to question the role of straight edge and its relationship to DIY production as an anti-capitalist creative practice. Through a critical assessment of the lifestyle politics of straight edge in the Indonesian scene, I explore the potentials and limits of subcultural identity practices for emancipatory politics. Entangled in contradictory discourses and practices of collective identity, personal choice, subcultural authenticity, and anti-capitalist activism, straight edge both helped to cohere a distinct anti-capitalist DIY hardcore current within the Indonesian punk scene and constrained the political potential of DIY practices within a framework of subcultural identity and lifestyle. I situate this specific history of straight edge in the Indonesian scene within a broader analysis of the contradiction within DIY punk between building positive personal and social alternatives and critically negating existing modes of identification and sociality.

The Pasupati flyover (Pasteur-Surapati) connecting Bandung to Jakarta has become a new symbol for the city. Recent policy has made the space located under the bridge, transformed from ‘dead space’ into a socially-significant urban space for marginal people governed by many stakeholders and consequently a contestation of multiple and conflicting interests including the governmental and corporate interests. The community interests are only one amongst many who invested in this space. This paper draws on a participatory research method to explore the lived experiences and creative activities held under the bridge, with a particular focus on the urban activism of Komunitas Taman Kota (Urban Park Community) and their collaborative work with local communities. In this paper we argue that through reclaiming the ‘flyover’ under space, community activists are asserting rights of the local community and the wider interests of the people of Bandung, against domination of state or neoliberal privatization.

Challenging the dichotomy of collective tradition versus individual creativity, the papers in this special issue explore the dynamics of creative intersubjectivity in diverse performance contexts from Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific. In this Introduction, we situate these contributions within the wider discussion of the social meaning, location, and organisation of the creative process, arguing for an anthropological approach that affirms the vital role of intersubjective relationships among performers, their audiences, and the wider socio-cultural context of performance. Furthermore, we emphasise the embodied as well as the discursive dimension of this creative intersubjectivity, an approach also affirmed by the papers that follow. By bringing together research into a range of music and dance forms from the Asia-Pacific, including modern, hybrid and more traditional performance styles, we aim to provide a distinct regional perspective on the creative process and its role in the reconfiguration of social relationships and social values.

The city of Bandung, Indonesia is home to a significant hardcore punk scene; within this scene, a small community strives to uphold anti-commercial 'Do It Yourself' (DIY) principles, organising independent hardcore shows 'by the kids, for the kids'. Inspired by global DIY hardcore practices, but grounded in the local scene, these shows are organised and experienced as displays of community solidarity and autonomy from the capitalist market. In this paper, I argue that the DIY values of autonomy (kemandirian) and community (komunitas) are expressed and realised through the intersubjective relationships established through the organisation and performance of hardcore music. DIY hardcore performances are collectively organised and participatory events that explicitly challenge the divide between performer and audience. Their values of autonomy and community are symbolised by the circle pit, a form of punk dancing that expresses both social cohesion and playful disorder. In seeking to establish such a synthesis, DIY hardcore performances reflect the anti-capitalist politics of the 'DIY kids' (anak DIY) and their desires for another way of life. Rather than simply gesturing towards such a social alternative, the DIY show demonstrates that musical performance is an intersubjective act of social creativity, producing new forms of value and new models for social organisation. At the same time, the social creativity of DIY hardcore is limited by its aestheticisation as a set of performance styles that remain entangled in the contradictions of the commodity form.

This article explores the entangled and contradictory processes of territorialisation and deterritorialisation that have shaped the hardcore punk scene in Bandung, Indonesia, while questioning the binary model of globalisation and localisation. The formation of the Bandung scene has certainly involved processes of local adaptation, translation, and territorialisation, but these cannot be disentangled from the global styles, orientations, and networks associated with hardcore punk. Through their active participation in global hardcore, Bandung's punks adopt a standpoint of underground cosmopolitanism that goes beyond a merely mimetic relationship to Western scenes. Their valorisation of local "Do It Yourself" production and performance reflects the value practices of global hardcore punk, and the social relationships that constitute the local scene extend beyond any straightforwardly spatial definition of the "local." At the same time, this global orientation takes on particular locally-inflected meanings in the specific cultural and political environment of Bandung, Indonesia.

Challenging the dichotomy of collective tradition versus individual creativity, the papers in this special issue explore the dynamics of creative intersubjectivity in diverse performance contexts from Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific. In this Introduction, we situate these contributions within the wider discussion of the social meaning, location, and organisation of the creative process, arguing for an anthropological approach that affirms the vital role of intersubjective relationships among performers, their audiences, and the wider socio-cultural context of performance. Furthermore, we emphasise the embodied as well as the discursive dimension of this creative intersubjectivity, an approach also affirmed by the papers that follow. By bringing together research into a range of music and dance forms from the Asia-Pacific, including modern, hybrid and more traditional performance styles, we aim to provide a distinct regional perspective on the creative process and its role in the reconfiguration of social relationships and social values.

Indonesia boasts a thriving underground music scene that has become an important element in the identity practices of many urban youth. For dedicated ‘scenesters’, the underground is more than a personal expression of style; it is a way of life, and often a way to make a living. I draw on the concept of ‘precarity’ to examine the underground value of independence (kemandirian) in the context of the precarious position of urban youth in neoliberal Indonesia. The identities and practices of the underground scene are both a reaction against and a reflection of this experience. Scenesters draw on their underground identities, and the autonomous community networks they have established, in order to assert their independence from the demands of capital. However, they also mobilise this independence as the basis for their own entrepreneurial activities, resulting in a nascent tendency towards capital accumulation and class polarisation within the scene.