Pakaroso! is Pamona for “mutual strengthening”, a call popularized by cultural environmental movement Aliansi Penjaga Danau Poso (Lake Poso Guardian Alliance, abbreviated to APDP). Since 2018, APDP has been campaigning against government cooperation with PT Poso Energy, a company owned by Jusuf Kalla’s family empire, which plans to excavate a 12-kilometer drainage basin at the end of Lake Poso for its two hydropower projects. APDP revived the “Pakaroso!” spirit as a counternarrative to “Maroso”, a slogan appropriated by the local government for propaganda, which means “strength”.
The spirit of Pakaroso! and mutual strengthening are among the ideas of solidarity and life that inspire and ignite Peretas Berkumpul 01.
Peretas, short for perempuan lintas batas (literal translation: women crossing boundaries) works through ands toward the politics of feminist solidarity among women art workers in Indonesia and beyond. The Indonesian word “peretas” means hacker, which renders our spirit to socially hack the stereotypical definition and hegemonic construction that confine women. In our collective endeavours, we navigate with an intersectional perspective to expose the plurality of women subjectivities that cross and disrupt borders between nations, races, ethnicities, classes, sexualities, religions, and disabilities.
Peretas’ programs aim at supporting the making of productive and reproductive spaces for women, queer and youth by organizing Peretas Berkumpul (our annual assembly), research projects, book publications, and public discussions. Through these activities we hope to engage with the expanded notion of arts and culture in relation to social and ecological movements, which move towards social transformation and knowledge distribution instead of centralizing in creative industry productivity-driven or individual career. Our organizing practice involves critical knowledge-commoning, care work, democratic dissensus, artistic sensibilities, and radical imagination to nurture safe space and speak up against dominant power.
Peretas was founded in 2017 by Dhyta Caturani, Felencia Hutabarat, Lisabona Rahman, and Naomi Srikandi.
Contact: info@peretas.org
This website is designed by Natasha Tontey in collaboration with web developer ScriptMedia (2019-2020).
Peretas logo is designed by Cadrilla Bareno (2019).
The English text version in this website is translated by Kezia Alaia (July 2020).
All contents in this website are published under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence.