June Feature: Interview with Khairani Barokka

We are proud to have Khairani Barokka as our featured artist of June!

Khairani Barokka, (b. Jakarta, 1985) is a writer, poet and artist in London. Among her honours, she was an NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow for her masters, Emerging Writers Festival’s (AUS) Inaugural International Writer-In-Residence (2013), and Indonesia’s first Writer-In-Residence at Vermont Studio Center (2011).

Okka is the writer/performer/producer of, among others, a deaf-accessible, solo poetry/art show, Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee. It premiered at Edinburgh Fringe 2014 as Indonesia’s only representative, with a grant from HIVOS. She was recognized in 2014 by UNFPA as one of Indonesia’s “Inspirational Young Leaders Driving Social Change", for highly prolific, pioneering international work in inclusive, accessible arts.

Published internationally in anthologies and journals, Okka has presented work extensively, in nine countries, been awarded six residencies and various grants, appeared widely in the media, and given two TEDx talks (Jakarta and Youth@Chennai). She is author-illustrator of Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis Press, November 2016), co-editor of HEAT: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology (Buku Fixi Publishing, 2016), and a PhD-by-practice researcher at Goldsmiths, as an LPDP Scholar in Visual Cultures. Recent work and more is housed at www.khairanibarokka.com. She updates at @mailbykite.

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Q: First off, we’re delighted to feature you for the month of June! Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself?

A: Thank you for having me. I'm an Indonesian writer, poet, artist and PhD researcher at Goldsmiths in London, working on a visual cultures project in the form of critical and creative writing, as well as visual work. I have an interest in crip cultures and disability justice as inseparable from anti-misogyny and postcolonial movements, and am currently preparing whole avocados with yogurt and honey, which I hope will be as delicious as it sounds.

Q: Much of your art combines different media together - writing, art, sound, etc. Is there a particular medium you feel most attached to?

A: I don't really see disciplinary boundaries very easily. This probably comes from being exposed to the work of other interdisciplinarians, the exploratory environment of the graduate schools I've been to/am in (NYU ITP and Goldsmiths), and Indonesian, crip and disability art cultures. I think all writing is also a performance, a bodily act. I think all written work can be performed, and poems can be paintings, theatre, etc. It’s just about what form the story or emotion(s) want to take shape as, and you can never tell where it'll go, really. A good example is Indigenous Species (coming out in November), which began as a poem written in 2013, and was first performed that same year. I toyed with turning it into performance installation circa late 2014, realized it needed to be a book, thought of how discriminatory our publishing ecosystem is for my sight-impaired or blind friends, and decided the book would combine Braille and text and be tactile. Before Tilted Axis thankfully picked it up, I'd been ready to have Indigenous produced 10, even 20 years down the line. I'd no expectation a publisher would snap it up easily. And looking back, I'd really no idea at all when I wrote it in 2013 that it would be its own book, let alone be combined with art--one-poem art books aren't a plentiful commodity, and I'm glad to be in the company of writer-artists such as Nancy Campbell, who recognise the weirdness of this and jump straight into making them anyway. OK, that was a very long-winded way of getting around to pledging allegiance to writing and storytelling in general, in whatever (art) forms it will stay as or eventually take!

Q: How and why did you begin writing/creating art?

A: Like many children, I wrestled with making things from when I was very small, and I began writing rudimentary poetry as a toddler. Thanks go to my parents for raising us in houses full of books and fingerpaints, and a non-monetary sense of riches. I remember making a mini lit journal in elementary school with two friends, which we put so much effort into. Franda Li and Peng Wu, if you're out there, thank you for being two of my first literary collaborators! And of course, being Javanese and Padang, you're raised with myths, legends, folktales, incredibly complex cultural histories, and hopefully I've absorbed some of them. Many stumbling blocks as a young adult meant I never really let myself indulge in what I knew in my heart I wanted to do, until circumstances meant I could no longer avoid risking everything and putting every single thing I had into creative endeavors.

Apart from two or three creative writing (at ITP, it was poetry-programming) courses, I had been otherwise been writing very piecemeal. Grad school taught me about design thinking and experimentation, and let me dip a toe into the art world, which explains why I do quite experimental forms of the written word in relation to art today, alongside writing for the page in text form--whether translation into Braille alongside text and tactile images, publishing poems as paintings in a gallery, making a solo show that involves paint as well as spoken poetry, etc. The fear that comes with experimentation isn't as all-encompassing as it used to be, and I remind myself more often to make it playful. A large part of this I attribute to the accumulated ability to not care about what others think, and to more bemusedly brush aside racism, sexism, ableism. Turning 30 had its clear benefits in that regard. If you fail, you fail, but the pieces of the puzzle might reassemble in some way down the line, and nothing is without its lessons.

The blank page was frightening for years, to be honest. Though writing was my first love and remains my core, it was still a street fight and quite a painful process (literally and figuratively) to get here. They do say living a varied life is great fodder for writing, however—and without having done so, I suppose, I wouldn't be doing the things I do now that I really enjoy with as much relief and gratitude. Nor would I write the way I do not having known that much frustration and anguish, in trying to juggle health and risk. Finally getting proper healthcare here means the world, also, though it's difficult to know there are many women in need of pain treatment as I do that aren't getting it back home. It's a fact that women's pain isn't taken as seriously by medical establishments, and this needs to change. In any case, life is currently both calm and exciting. Years ago, I read Ann Patchett saying that in order for your art to go wild, to go to scary depths, you need a stable life, and I now find that very true. Wrestling with the work is never a cakewalk, but now I relish that struggle more, breathe more deeply.

Q: Do you, or have you ever, feel/felt a certain responsibility as an artist? Either to yourself or to the world around you. Where do you go when things get tough?

A: This is an excellent question. Raised in a communal environment, around activists, I really did feel a huge weight of responsibility to try and better situations for other disabled artists, sometimes at the expense of my own well-being. There's obviously some survivor's guilt as well. Recently, however, I've shaken off self-perceived mantles of responsibility and relaxed into just being a writer and an artist, with work that can be taken any number of ways. I think it's proved much better as a way to approach the work, and it's given me more responsibility for my own wellness. I also felt a lot of responsibility to write about where I come from, and our histories of trauma, but ultimately you'll go crazy thinking about shoulds--now I just follow the work, which other artists such as yourself can understand, and it will reflect my worldview either way. Who knows if it will do some good; ultimately how it's perceived is not up to us. When things get tough, I write them out. I also go to trusted people, and I go to laughter. Comedy is an enormous gift to the universe; who would take us humanoids seriously? We are a ridiculous species, perfectly primed to be guffawed at as we slowly destroy and try to protect our planet.

Q: Who, in your communities, inspires you? Who do you draw motivation from?

A: At the moment: Frida Kahlo. Lisa Bufano. Wangechi Mutu. Murni. Tintin Wulia. Hannah Höch. Rudolfo Anaya, whose work I read when young but has completely impacted my trajectory as an adult, somehow. Jose Esteban Muñoz. Sinister synthpop. The brave farmer women of Kendeng, Indonesia who literally cemented their feet last month--they're protesting the construction of a PT Semen Indonesia cement plant, that would take their access to clean water and livelihoods. Unnamed brown girls in Western paintings. My late grandparents. My nephews and nieces. My family, period. Friends and partner. The creative processes of chefs and designers. The Wicked and the Divine graphic novel series. Marjorie Liu. My fellow researchers and creators at Goldsmiths. The last great poetry book I read, which is currently Daniel Sluman's The Terrible. Various brief interactions at work, on the road, on public transit, that somehow leak into your skin and inform how you see the world. On my desk right now are tiny prints and watercolours by artists who remind me we're all in it together (all of whom happen to be women). We're craftspersons, so we can't have the luxury of waiting for inspiration--just wrangling the beast that is the soul of the thing you want. Just diving in. It's a delicious kind of dance, and torture, and its own kind of brutal hopefulness. Would love to hear how you feel about that dance!

Q: A dance is exactly how I'd describe it. Some days I'm in perfect time, churning out poems upon poems. Other times (most times), I go for months, scratching my head, shaking, swearing at the clouds, squeezing out a single metaphor after hours of work. Do you have certain fallback techniques or prompts you use when the roadblocks hit?

A: That is a lovely description of the process. Certainly sometimes the dancing is more like headbanging, which can be pretty fun but not for the faint of heart. The saying that "the only way out is through" is accurate. Some things I've worked on over 10 years, and some shoot out smoothly for no reason at all. All of us are probably addicted to the madness of this. Interestingly, there were two pages in Indigenous Species (coming out in November) that I really approached tentatively in terms of the artwork, and I fretted over them for days--in the end, the work somehow mirrored the frustration I'd felt, and came out grittier and (I hope) more complicated and layered for it. So perhaps frustration can be a good thing. Leaving the work for a bit and coming back to it with a fresh set of eyes is also great for ruthless editing.

Q: From our previous Feature of the Month, IS Jones: what are beautiful things that terrify you?

A: This is possibly the best question anyone has asked me, so thank you. In answer: The past and the future, vaguely. Vacant spaces, broadly. Well-designed bling masking ecological sins. And dinosaurs. Obviously. Misunderstandings. Sometimes, isolation. Sometimes, other people.

Q: What advice would you give to your younger self?

A: Believe it or not, there's an end to all current tunnels. Keep writing. Keep making. Be patient. Laugh more. Save money. Be kind. Appreciate the people around you fully. Insist on what may seem impossible: insist on health and insist on poetry. Don't be so hard on yourself. (Actually, I'd give that advice to my current self too, and possibly my future self!)

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