Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia by Karen Strassler

Following Refracted Visions (2010), her landmark study of the way Indonesians recognized themselves as modern subjects through the medium of photography, Karen Strassler's new book, Demanding Images, moves on to examine how images become discursive and socio-political events whose outcomes are hard to predict, dynamic, and subject to rapid shifts in their ongoing trajectories. Strassler focuses her examination of "image-events" (a political process set in motion by an image or series of images intervening in a social field and turning into a focal point for discursive and affective engagement of diverse publics, p. 10) on the reform era from 1998 to the election of Joko Widodo as President in 2014. This allows her to chart how the euphoria of liberation from an authoritarian government faded over time, or rather shrunk into a "neo-liberal idea of volunteerism" and a closely circumscribed notion of "mental revolution" whose supporters sought to differentiate responsible democratic citizens from the unruly crowds (massa) that have long haunted modern elite political imaginaries in Indonesia.

As Demanding Images demonstrates, the first 15 years of post-Suharto Indonesia were fertile ground for significant image-events, several of which become the foci of the book's five chapters and conclusion. Following the introduction, in which Strassler sets out her project's scope, defines her terms, and foregrounds her theoretical commitments, Chapter One traces the ways in which, following the fall of Suharto from power, small entrepreneurs and other anonymous actors refigured the iconic state-produced medium of money, producing in ludic fashion currency-like stickers which replaced Suharto's image with that of oppositional politicians, both signalling a crisis in authority and suggesting Suharto's use of "political power for economic gain and economic power for political gain" (p. 61). Chapter Two investigates the disparity between widespread images of male-on-male violence during the riots of May 1998 that brought about Suharto's downfall, and the lack of images documenting the rape of ethnic Indonesian-Chinese women that enabled public discourse to relegate reports of these rapes to the status of "rumor". Chapter Three details the prevalence of Reformasi-era sex-exposure scandals and the rise of image technology "experts" such as Roy Suryo amidst doubts about the authenticity of scandalous photographs, as well as subsequent ridicule and criticism of Suryo. Chapter Four charts the controversy over Agus Suwage's and Davy Linggar's Pinkswing Park installation art piece, highlighting the different ideologies of artists seeking to preserve newfound freedom of expression and hardline Muslim groups, like Front Pembela Islam, which sought to fill the vacuum of authority in post-Suharto Indonesia with a particular view of Islamic morality. Chapter Five follows public discussions about the propriety of images in public spaces in the Central Javanese city of Yogyakarta. This chapter is particularly fascinating as it shows through debates about who—artists, businesses, political groups, graffiti taggers—can use public spaces for their own purposes, whether what is displayed on city walls—art, advertisements, or tagging scrawls—is an aesthetic enhancement or visual garbage, and how many middle-class Indonesians who might otherwise have supported Reformasi began to talk of "out-of-control-democracy" (demokrasi kebablasan) as Yogyakarta's buildings surfaces filled with an often riotous tangle of competing images. One salient example Strassler elucidates is the contest between banners (spanduk) supporting Kopassus soldiers involved in an extrajudicial revenge killing of prisoners who had previously slain one of the Kopassus members' comrades, and street art opposing the valorization of such acts. Finally, the book's conclusion scrutinizes the ways in which from 2013–14 presidential campaigners for both candidates, Jokowi and Prabowo, used images—manipulated or "authentic"—to summon support for their respective candidates. In so doing, Strassler also points out the practical limits of the neo-liberal, pro-democracy ideologies of many of the volunteers supporting Jokowi, who worked to ensure a clean election.

This is a challenging book, but also a smart one. Strassler's analysis is generally sharp and nuanced, noting the often surprising and ironic political twists and turns of the image-events she parses. In so doing, making use, fittingly, of many of the images she discusses, the author nimbly demonstrates the way in which Indonesian publics struggled in their search for transparency and the authentic, caught between the exhilaration of Reformasi's new freedom of expression and the fear of chaos and a vacuum of authority that allowed censorship to creep back into daily life, whether through hardline Islamic groups claiming to fight for public morality, media conglomerates consciously limiting what was covered in their news, or calls for policing what was put up in urban public spaces. In short, Demanding Images constitutes a valuable addition not only to studies in visual anthropology, but to those of Indonesian popular culture, politics, and visual art as well.