The value of the underground: punk, politics, and creative urbanism in Bandung, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Underground scene
• Indonesia
• creativity
• value politics
• urban space

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Sean Martin-Iverson is a Research Officer in the School of Social Sciences at The University of Western Australia, working as part of a project investigating social vulnerabilities in Indonesia. He has ongoing research interests in global punk and underground music scenes, anti-capitalist social movements, urban Indonesia, radical social theory, and the politics of cultural production.