Audio Interviews

Gustaff Harriman Iskandar - Q & A with Andrew Senior

I'd like to start off by asking you a question because one of the things that I noticed from your application was that, in a way, whilst you are taking part in this young design entrepreneur award, you're far more than just being a young design entrepreneur. You're a creative entrepreneur in many, many other fields as well.
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But you've been instrumental in setting up the Bandung Centre for New Media Arts which, in a way, seems to be a long way away from what many of the other finalists are doing, because they have their own design businesses and the like. But your's is a different space that you are inhabiting?
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But my understanding of Indonesia is that it has a very rich tradition in crafts and design. Are you suggesting that that tradition is there but that it is difficult to then see how it projects itself into the contemporary?
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But from what you're saying - part of the message that I am taking - actually for young Indonesians, whether they be young designers or not, there isn't really a sense of a strong link between the tradition, the heritage of design, in Indonesia, in the many different cultures that are there in Indonesia and contemporary manifestations. That the link isn't being made. That somewhere it's not being interpreted backwards and forwards. How do you go and solve a problem like that?
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But you're one agency, you're one individual working within one agency, admittedly in one of the most important cities in Indonesia, certainly in terms of creativity, because Bandung has a very rich heritage, particularly in music and the like. But there are other centres like Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Bali, places like that. How do you go about extending your reach, that message, into those other places in Indonesia and getting the same sort of things happening there?
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And do you think that that sentiment is shared in other cities, like Jakarta and Yogyakarta, are there similar agencies to yours, similar people working in the private sector, developing the same sort of ideas?
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I was going to ask you about that because Indonesia's unusual because they're taking part in four of the awards this year and they've run it as a programme concurrently, so that we've already had a music finalist, we've now got a design finalist in you; we've got a screen finalist and a fashion finalist still to come this year. How important has it been in terms of the profile of that campaign, reaching out and giving people a sense of an opportunity and the way in which the UK wants to engage with Indonesia?
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I want to now turn to your experience, being here in the UK. Has it been what you expected it to be
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I want to ask you then about the whole nature of the network. There were nine other people with you on the programme and I know that, for example, on the first day when I was interviewing Seyi from Nigeria, he was saying that he'd immediately felt a connection with you. Is that how you've felt during the programme? Has it been important to be here with these nine other people?
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Last Friday you went before the judges. The decision is announced this Friday. Are you hopeful?
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