Performance
Kelvin Atmadibrata
Kelvin Atmadibrata (b.1988, Jakarta, Indonesia) is the first recipient of Ivan Ladislav Galeta Prize, awarded by Academy of Arts in Osijek for his touring performance, Forcing Hyacinth in Međunarodno studentsko bijenale, Zagreb, Croatia. The awarded work has also been presented in performance and fringe festivals in twelve cities around United Kingdom and Europe since its London premier in October 2018. He is also the finalist of the national Indonesian Art Award in 2015 followed by Bandung Contemporary Art Award in 2017.
Kelvin completed his Bachelor of Fine Art majoring in Interactive Media from School of Art, Design and Media in Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and has been practicing, exhibiting and participating in exhibitions and festivals since 2010. In 2017 he established Sepersepuluh, a performance-focused gallery in Jakarta, Indonesia which currently focuses as nomadic curatorial, collaborative and investigational project since he moved to London in 2018.
He now lives and works between Jakarta and London having recently graduated with Master of Art in Contemporary Art Practice (Performance) from Royal College of Art.
Kelvin Atmadibrata recruits superpowers awakened by puberty and adolescent fantasy. Equipped by shōnencharacters, kōhai hierarchy and macho ero-kawaii, he often personifies power and strength into partially canon and fan fiction antiheroes to contest the masculine and erotica in Southeast Asia.
He works primarily with performances, often accompanied by and translated into drawings, mixed media collages and objects compiled as installations. Approached as bricolages, Kelvin translates narratives and recreates personifications based on RPGs (Role-playing video games) theories and pop mythologies.
As an expansion of his post graduate study, he is developing the language of queer abstraction and minimalist erotica in his illustration of the mecha and transhumanist fantasy. As an apprentice tattooist, he has also been experimenting on the process of image markings on skin as a continuation of his attraction to living sculptures, breathing mannequins and bodies as pedestals.
I'll be a Good Boy
I’ll be a Good Boy is hence, a tangent project of the aforementioned. I revisit a material that has only been referential, the messages themselves. They have been dissected and rearranged into a soliloquy that may resemble a prayer with two distinct segments, made clear by the language shift from Indonesian to English. The work will be sent directly to the audience’s mobile device through WhatsApp, the exact application where I received them. Accompanying the 49-lines, sometimes one-phrase messages would be a digital photograph, taken from my mobile phone that has never left their intended platform for any editing. Hence the work will and should never leave the digital platform but to remain within the mobile device which could function as its pedestal.
I’ll be a Good Boy is an invitation to dominate as well as a request to submit. Borrowing the situation of sexting, which could be abusive and non-consensual, it is also a reflection of online sexual trolling that may be borderline harassment that blurs and questions the extent of private, anonymous space of homoerotic sub-culture.
A demonstration of a possible reading to perform the text will be held daily at 23.00 BST from 14-31 July through my Instagram live @kelvinatmadibrata.
The work comes in an edition of 100+1AP, specifically made for the presentation platform of RCA 2020. The work is free of charge and accompanied by a digital certificate of authenticity but its availability is on a first-come-first-served basis.
To request an edition, please text “I’ll be a Good Boy” to +44 7999 905 913 through WhatsApp and the work will be sent as a reply to that text.
Note to audience:
+ Due to the high volume of messages you will receive (49 text messages and 1 digital photograph), it is recommended to mute notifications from +44 7999 905 913.
+ There is no specific time when the work will be sent neither can you request for a specific time to receive the texts.
+ If you do not receive any replies from +44 7999 905 913 after twenty-four hours means that all available editions have been redeemed.
+ Your mobile numbers will not be saved neither will it be used for any purposes other than to deliver the artwork.
+ The number +44 7999 905 913 will only operate from 14-31 July 2020 and will cease operation shortly after the end of RCA 2020.
I'll be a Good Boy
Medium:
WhatsApp messages and photograph taken with iPhone8 cameraSize:
49 bi-lingual text messages and 1.9MB image, edition of 100+1AP
you loved me and i used you
you don't want my help
i want my bones!
mou ikkai
i don't want to rock
anata ni wa boku ga mieru ka
The performer has to identify as male, regardless of gender by birth and not more than 165cm tall. The board is to be replicated in a towering size of 200x150cm, framing and juxtaposing the body as minuscule. The objective is to maintain discipline until it is taken over by fatigue, hence duration varies from one executant to another. Once finished, the blackboard remains on the floor, against the wall throughout the exhibition, except the last piece which is to be exhibited upside down.
Each text work is accompanied by a photographic image.
Command