Book, craft and vintage suitcase: everyday media practice in creative collectives

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which independent creative collectives disrupt, or counteract, the official narratives and top-down branding of a designated creative city in Indonesia. This article explores the everyday lived practices of creativity of individuals within three creative collectives in Bandung: Tobucil & Klabs, Kineruku and Omuniuum. Based on field research conducted between 2016 and 2017, and using a combination of ethnographic and visual methodology in the form of photo-documentation, the discussion also touches upon the role social media plays in the collectives’ everyday creativities. All the findings articulate their personal identities while showing the intertwining practices in both online and offline settings. These individuals and their respective creative collectives derive advantages from the social relations that they build, creating a network organically formed from below that maintains community and commonality amongst its members. This eventually leads to the formation of the creative collectives’ identities within this particular creative city. Book, craft and vintage suitcase–as three distinctive elements found in the study–become both material and symbolic elements of the rich tapestry of the everyday creativities of these creative collectives.