Yogyakarta, July 2nd 2020—Creative Hub FISIPOL UGM together with Kartitedjo held its first #SmallTalk called ‘Ups and Downs of Business in the Field of Culture’ on the Instagram Live on Thursday (2/7). Kartitedjo is a social business which preserving the Javanese culture through the creative audiovisual contents and social issues. The discussion started at 04.00 p.m. and was moderated by Dendi. Some members of Kartitedjo team also presented in this event.
Kartitedjo established in 2016 by nine young people who had the same concern, which was the Javanese descent but did not grow up in a Javanese culture, but grew up with a foreign culture. The name of Kartitedjo itself had its own philosophy. Karti means Karepeng Ati and Tedjo means Teladaning Djiwo. It means, Kartitedjo was built based on the heart calling and must be done wholeheartedly when they entered that field. “We had the philosophy that if it was the heart calling, we should do it,” Ulul said.
According to Gabra, at first they got held up because of inadequate facilities, they had to rent or borrowed it first while they were saving up for their projects, either it was commercial or non-commercial. Other than that, for the non-technique thing, they were confused to do their projects and how to adjust it with the millennials. Even so, Nizar admitted that there were much more fun compared to the difficulties, because they could manage to have a broader networks, and got to know more the other cultural communities. Meanwhile for Amir, the only member who is not the Javanese descendant, he admitted that he had the hard time in communicating because his ability to speak Javanese language was still lacking. Communication difficulties also happened when they did a project for the difabel community. But, he managed it by always learning and adapting. “So, we are in Kartitedjo are still learning, and adapting to get along with the clients, that we faced” he said.
In this pandemic, Kartitedjo busy with self improvement to keep them producing more creative things. Because in this pandemic, they did not allow to make a big crowd, even they often got their job from shows, music shows, etc. “This pandemic made us had a difficult time, because we often do our jobs in the crowded area. Because of this sudden pandemic, there were no events in the last three months, it was difficult for us,” Amir said. From there, they thought hard how to survive before deciding that they must pick the job up, even with the health protocol. They also were not in full team and just focused in the Yogyakarta area, even though in the normal situation they often show in the other cities.
Other than video production, Kartitedjo also held a workshop. According to Ulul, Kartitedjo did not want to commercialize and capitalize all of the cultures. They would be so happy if there were people who wanted to learn together and grow their collectivism, because however it was, the people in community know more about their own culture. Talked about their childhood which did not really understand about the Javanese culture, Kartitedjo compensated it with srawung (well-socialized with the people), tried to dive into the cultural communities even they did not know much. One of its reasons to survive was socializing.
The discussion was ended at 05.00 p.m. and their videos could be watched on the Instagram TV of @chubfisipol.