This article examines cultural commoning in Indonesian cinema by analysing how ethnic specificity is mobilized and articulated through storytelling, production, and circulation. Focusing on Ngeri-Ngeri Sedap (2022), the study shows how Bataknese cultural elements in this film are activated not as commodified spectacles or exotic markers, but as lived social resources embedded in the narration and its production process. At the narrative level, it is grounded in the everyday practices of family life and memory. At the level of production, the Bataknese director, art director, and cinematographer draw on shared personal experiences to shape the film’s narrative development and cinematographic elements, reflecting familiar domestic spaces and emotional dynamics recognizable to Bataknese audiences. In terms of circulation, the film relies on kinship-based WhatsApp groups, church networks, and targeted community screenings in regions with significant Bataknese populations, which prioritize relational trust and communal endorsement over algorithm-driven promotion. While deeply rooted in the Bataknese cultural context, the film’s exploration of migration, intergenerational conflict, reconciliation, and familial obligation resonates across ethnic boundaries. Ngeri-Ngeri Sedap (2022) demonstrates how regional filmmaking, despite being produced in the “centre” (Jakarta), could foster shared affective recognition and collective cultural engagement, thereby contesting capitalist, market-centred logics in Indonesia.
This article develops the concept of “appreciative commoning” to focus on the importance of appreciation in musical community practices. By examining the practices of musical knowledge-sharing in the Earhouse Songwriting Club (ESC), a songwriting community, this article argues that greater attention should be paid to the roles of appreciation and support in facilitating media and cultural commoning in Indonesia. The article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Earhouse, an initiative space located in Pamulang, South Tangerang, established by the musician duo Endah N Rhesa. Exploring three main activities of the community: weekly meetings, monthly showcases, and afterparties, I show how embracing appreciation is a crucial act in sharing musical knowledge among members of ESC. Throughout the article, I contextualize ESC practices by examining Pamulang’s urban context, Endah N Rhesa’s personal motivation, members’ opinions, and the specific mechanisms and articulations that influence them. Lastly, I situate the ESC practices against the growing acts of musical gatekeeping, particularly musical snobbery, that stifle musical knowledge-sharing in the Indonesian music scene. I argue that ESC’s appreciative commoning counters this musical gatekeeping by creating a form of communitas in which musical knowledge is shared equally through appreciative gestures. Although the concept requires further application in other contexts, appreciative commoning offers a perceptive focus on how humans interact through the arts and music.
How do young people make sense of themselves through the stories they tell about their lives in cities? In this article, we examine youth media-making in Malang and Batu, Indonesia, as a meaningful practice of commoning that engages with the construction of youth and the city under the neoliberal logic of urban development in Southeast Asia. Our Participatory Action Research (PAR) with young people in local neighbourhoods has produced a series of documentary films and an anthology, co-authored to narrate their lived urban experiences and interactions with tourism. By telling their own stories from kampung wisata (tourism neighbourhoods), they articulate their roles as active citizens, moving beyond technocratic, top-down framings of youth as entrepreneurial agents and creative resources for tourism endorsed by local governments. As the youth navigate complex forms of participation in the rewang culture, declining community tourism, and environmental issues, commoning has provided spaces to imagine a more inclusive urban future – one that moves beyond neoliberal commodification.
