In Conversation Barbara London and Tromarama

Barbara London: It's wonderful to be here. And it’s wonderful to have a few friends in the audience. Thank you very much, Robyn, for inviting me. It's fun to be in conversation with the three of you. Tromarama is Febie[Babyrose], Herbert [Hans] and Ruddy [Hatumena]. So the three of you formed Tromarama, an internationally acclaimed group working with installation, moving image, performance and consumer technologies. And you've presented your work in many biennials, many contemporary shows. I want to mention that a few years ago I saw your very witty installation, Soliloquy at Petzel Gallery in New York, but it was really Kiang Malingue, a wonderful gallery from Hong Kong. I want to know, twenty years ago, what brought the three of you together in Bandung? I think you were in school then. Please tell me a bit about this background.

Ruddy Hatumena: We all went to the same art school and we have this shared interest in moving images. We consumed a lot of music videos from MTV maybe because at the time the internet was not that accessible. If you want to see, like, cutting edge moving images, MTV was one of our references. So during 2000 and the end of 2005, there was this music video production house called Trahati in Bandung. They initiated this workshop for students to create music videos. So they teach us from, preparation like pre-production, production and post-production for music videos and we attended that workshop as a group and,at the end we made a video for a band called Srini. At the time we had limited skills in creating a proper music video, and learned from music directors that had a more tactile manual approach to video.

Simultaneously, we also studied animation because me and Herbert, we come from a more graphic design background and Febie comes from a printmaking background so we were attempting to combine the things we were already studying. Bringing our background of graphic design and Febie’s printmaking technique, we utilized this woodcut technique we learned from Febie’s studio that we found suitable for a music video we were working on for a rock band. It was our first time working together.

BL: So you went to school in Bandung; Herbert and Febie you are still based there, and Ruddy, you now live in Jakarta. You were telling me over a little lunch that we're all so technologically minded now. We all have our phone somewhere beside us. And your collaboration is based on Whatsapp now that one of you is based in a city a couple of hours away.

Febie Babyrose: That's true.

BL: How do you do that? Do you do that by voice, by images, by moving images? I love the idea that you did your early music video-like work using woodcut because it's stop action. Woodcut is visceral and feels so direct. But tell me a little bit about how you use WhatsApp?

FB: Okay, so before we move to our WhatsApp group, we actually, do have studios, but after Rudy, moved back to Jakarta, we felt like, maybe studio works could change because most of the time, the three of us, somehow, put the discussions inside the WhatsApp group, maybe,somebody sends a PDF file and then the other two read it and then give their commands or put another PDF file to us to read. And then there's a lot of moving images or references or links to it inside our WhatsApp group. So we already have thousands of images inside the clouds only coming from that WhatsApp group. And then every day we always talk about the schedules, and when we will meet and what we will make next. Or maybe some new ideas pop up or new references or materials that we are going to use.

BL: I'm very curious about the name of your group, Tromarama. It makes me think of Trauma…

FB: In a way, yes, because the first video that Rudy mentioned before– using stop motion animation with woodcut–was produced when we were still in art school. The video is four minutes and 30 seconds long. So it's like using 450 [pieces of] plywood to carve out. So for us, the first time doing that for a whole month after we finished art school, working together until late at night was an experience that traumatized us. So that's why the name is trauma…and rama…it was a rhyme because in Bandung they like to repeat things kind of like words, like for example, like actually this is kind of like a joke. For example, if your name is Barbara, they will have a “Barbara Bara,” you know, this kind of rhyming. So that's why “Tromarama” is a rhyme. But rama also comes from panorama. It means kinda like a view.

BL: I like thinking about your work as a panorama. And your work here is installation and it's a panorama of sorts. But because it's you, it's a Trauma-rama. Yes.

These materials here at the Kitchen were sourced from New York. But I don't think you scurried around New York to gather them, so perhaps you had other people do some scurrying. But then you made choices. Did you give instructions to the people who went and found the material?

Herbert Hans: Yeah. Actually our first idea was to collect discarded objects that people put in front of their house.

HH: Yeah, that’s our first idea. But through a lot of the meetings , we talked to Robyn and David, who suggested that we can source objects from the warehouse called MFTA (Material for the Arts). The day after we arrived in New York, we went there. We are grateful for having time at MFTA because our first idea–to scour the city– was going to be time consuming. It took only two hours and we were able to find domestic objects that resonated with us. We wanted to make the installation feel domestic and private at the same time because we're thinking about the digital economy, and the shift from the idea of workspace within the factory or the office into our very personal spaces. So when the three of us were in the MFTA we were taking objects that really resonated with our homesThere's a crib, even the drying racks– Febie took them and used them for several days–then we took]them to the gallery for the installation.

BL: I don't know if the right word in English would be, jerry-rigged, but you've incorporated these various materials from here in New York. You came with a few pieces of equipment, small, maybe that was your processor. Was it only the processor you brought or you had other things? Like there's a little keyboard over there. Was that found?

RH: Yeah, so we brought the two machines that we showed you earlier. The machines are a computer that collects, that translates the data into binary code, which will activate the installation. We also brought some DC fans, which is the equipment that blows air into the instruments. Also some of the clamps and magic arm which, for example, we use a broom, that clamps and magic arm are the things that hold the instrumenWe also brought the cables and the lamps from Indonesia. Other than that, we sourced it from The Kitchen and from the MFTA.

So, going online and reading about what you do, and of course having seen Soliloquy, I know a little bit about what you do. So are you asking the viewer to consider how art can sort of rewire? You've rewired this space here. Are you looking to share the future with all of us? Over lunch you talked with me about community... We all have many different kinds of communities. We've got our friends we have lunch with or dinner with, friends we talk with on the phone, friends we hardly ever see, but we maybe write an email or send a WhatsApp. So tell me something about your different communities, including what this installation is sort of as a community.

FB: Okay, maybe from that we could go back a little bit to 2019. The installation that you saw first at Petzel Gallery, I think we could say that's the first iteration of these machines that we built and is connected to a Twitter databank. So the software inside has one job which is to crawl into the Twitter databank and then scrape the unused information from it; we use it with certain hashtags and then the certain hashtag is kinship. So, for us nowadays, because now we're actively kind of actively online with our smartphone. Like whenever you have time, you're always like checking in, like, are there anynew texts or new emails? And then it's kind of like an activity for us. It felt kind of lonely, but at the same time it's very busy in a way like you're reading your screens in a soliloquy manner: you're monologuing with yourself, but you are also building kinships inside the system.

So we scouted all the 98 lamps from a local flea market in Bandung because we felt like this object somehow feels the same with strangers on social media. Like you don't know their background, but you can make connections with them or maybe these objects could represent any information that you don't know the context or the idea behind, but somehow you feel you relate to them. Those installations became one of the landmarks in our career with using hashtags because we felt now the communities inside social media or inside the internet, their data was somehow activating our installations. Now fast forward to 2026, which with this installation we're using AI because we felt like what if we could build a scenario that blurs the line between traditional economy and the digital platforms that mediate economy.

That's why we're using Scrooge McDuck as a character.

BL: What is it?

FB: Scrooge McDuck because Donald Duck's uncle, for us, when we were children we were always waiting for him to pop up at our door. We grew up watching animations, manga, and reading comics. My mom always would tell me, "You need to save your money so you can be rich like Scrooge McDuck," because he always liked swimming in the pool of gold coins. So that's the backstory. Fast forward to the current economy, which is a digital platform economy in a way. People keep talking about our energy, our time to make this data circulate inside the internet–which is also like a new economy– has become a contrast between before–I mean like before the economy, need you to work hard. Then saving so you have a lot of gold coins compared to nowadays–to how we became online, like the data also became a source of economy, to kind of circulate.

The whole book of Scrooge McDuck informs the installation: we put it inside the AI system which then generates the lyrics in the exhibition and then we built the community around it, like inside the system itself with how the performers then collaborated with the machines through the karaoke style performances.

BL: I think some of my generation grew up with cartoons on TV on Saturday morning, or having comic books. Then later comes MTV and music. We're all pretty global through these media possibilities. I have to ask you about Indonesia, which is different from New York City. Was Japanese culture, Korean culture with the comics and the manga important for your practice? Was that something discussed in your art school or in your own lives? Were you reading comics or looking at those?

RH: POP Culture is not discussed in art school.

But I think it really affects aesthetic choices, like personal taste. I think for me personally, I think it really affects me, like, maybe like, watching Disney, MTV and like, playing video games. I think those kinds of things are subconsciously shaping my way of thinking and my artistic choices.

FB: But I think it really affects aesthetic choices, like personal taste. I think for me personally, I think it really affects me, like, maybe like, watching Disney, MTV and like, playing video games. I think those kinds of things are subconsciously shaping my way of thinking and my artistic choices.the animations and how I read the comic books, it's really kind of in a way, broader. For example, we do have comic books in Indonesia. But talking about important figures, I still remember when I was around six years old my parents told me that I could choose comics to read. And then I practically grabbed important figures in dance, such as Isadora Duncan. And then for me, from comic books I know about classical ballet, contemporary dance. In Indonesia it's really hard to see a ballet performance or modern dance or contemporary dance. But through comic books I learned, "Oh, I know there's something happening about dance, about moving with your body freely.” There's this kind of very structured dance going around. But there's somebody important who wants to break free from this kind of like a theory about movement.

HH: For me, I think, the discussion when we are talking about comics or the music video or the film that we watch, in our childhood and nowadays, the discussion has already shifted. For example, when we are talking about this, Scrooge McDuck, from the comic that we read, the comic is about how he chased gold throughout his life until he could build this empire of his own gold coins. When we talk about this, I think this experience, this particular experience reconnects with our recent interest with this digital platform where the definition of gold is shifting into our own intentions. So in Scrooge McDuck, the gold is like really physical materials, but nowadays the economy, what they consider is gold is our own attention, is our own data, data. Yeah. That's the new gold for us…how we see, and then that's how the comic connects with our recent interest toward our works.

BL: So the data is the gold?

HH: Yes.

BL: What is the gold? Data, like your data. I also wanna know about time. Time is also gold. We never have enough time. As a group, are you still making films? And this installation has a lot to do with time in a way. Can you tell me your thoughts about time?

HH: I think time, now time is already like a shift.

A shift-change, how we see time related to our labor. Usually we see times like, the productive time is like nine to five. But nowadays in this digital economy, the nine to five is already not relevant because we can be offline whenever we want, so it makes us work “24 hours.” Yes. So time has become more abstract than before for us - the concept of time

BL: More abstract or more problematic? Because if it's 24 hours, that's not easy.

FB: Maybe, I could tell a little bit more about the work that we did before in 2025, talking about time and this now new digital, new economy. So we built like a stack two meters high of calendars, and then on top of the calendars, there are these analog clocks that are always flipping. And then we erase all the numbers inside those flipping clocks. And then, talking about time in this digital platform, because like Herbert said, now like time for us is more abstract because we are always working in a way that we are always online inside the internet.

BL: Yeah. It sponges up. I'm fascinated by borders. There are borders in our lives, but we're almost borderless. You know, the way you can fly here, fly back home. We're all in motion. Is borderless an appropriate word for your work? Appropriate, is it an appropriate term? You're working in a very international way. Or maybe the idea of global versus local. But you live in one place, more or less one place, and you live near each other. We're absorbing so many bits of information, so borders are dissolving. And borders between mediums are dissolving. Now it's normal to be interdisciplinary.

FB: If we said, like “global,” I think, in a way, of course now everything seems global in a way because we are connected to the internet and then we see things on your end and then maybe you saw things from our end. But, yesterday at the opening, I got a question from one of the audience members and then she asked me, "Can I know what kind of Indonesian parts are in your works?" And then for me, we always get this kind of questions because they felt like the issue that we brought up or the technology or the installations felt that you can also feel. And then, at the opening, some people talk to me and say like this is very New York for them. And then I felt like, oh yeah, really? Then it also feels like Indonesia, because [of] how the performer sings, how the vocalist sings, how they play drums. It felt very familiar to me because we already did like two studio sessions before [in Jakarta]. But, I could say to answer her question back that I told her, you know, maybe what makes it different is our intention to build this kind of machine because this machine is actually hacking the system. Usually if we're talking about the machines, we only know the front end, the interface, like how the apps will work towards us. But the back end of it is very local, which is hacking, like we're really hacking the system. How does the machine translate the alphabets into the binary codes?

And then this happens because, in Indonesia we don't have this kind of big tech company that produces technology. So in a way, I think most of our technology is coming from abroad, maybe from Japan for instance, like the camera or America with Apple, we could say the smartphones or Taiwan or what else? I mean, there's a lot of technology coming to Indonesia, but we, as Indonesian, we always consume this kind of technology. So that's why this hacking culture is popping up into the system itself.

BL: There's something in the performance that I saw that you did the other night, you're very serious, but there's a sense of humor about what you do. And I have to say, and it's also very joyous and engaging. Is that a goal? I think it's really quite wonderful.

HH: Yeah, I think that is one of the things that we never had a specific intention on doing. I think throughout our body of work, we tend to discuss something [serious] through the works, but I don't know why sometimes the work feels humorous. For instance, we had this video, a two channel video, which, like the first channel of the video is a tabletop and we roll some objects on top of the table, and at the edge of the table the objects will fall, but it will fall out of the frame so you cannot see what is happening. So in the second screen, which is the legs of the table on top of a floor, but in a different setting, it's a different table and you can see some objects falling. Sometimes the object is the same object from the first video, the first channel, sometimes it's totally different.

So the mixture between like objects, we intended to play with people's perception. But along the way, while editing, it became like this very absurd connection between the first channel and the second channel and yeah, people started to laugh when watching it, but it was never our intention to make a funny video. I think that's still a mystery for us, like why when we do a work the humor always comes. We try to be serious artists, but it always happens like that. For this installation and performance, we wanted to create this platform when there's this tension between humans as a performer, but at the same time we wanted them to be part of the installation, like replacing one of the instruments that we usually have. And for instance,yesterday when the performance stopped, one of the performers was very into the zone, like he was playing the trumpets. The other performer already stopped and they moved towards the green room and he was just playing by himself like, it was for some people really funny like, wow, he's enjoying himself.

But for me, that is the difference between humans and machines. When you give a command to a machine - stop - the machine will stop. But this person was really focusing on the cue on the lamps and he didn't see the cue to stop. Even Robyn was waving, but he was just focusing, focusing, focusing… Yeah. It's really funny, but for me it's really beautiful. Like that's the beauty of humans.

BL: Well, it's very human. Your work has a very human side. I think when you talk about an object rolling on a table and off, I think we anthropomorphize so you identify with that little object moving. Ahhhhhhh. You're very close to music. I want to know what the group's relationship to music is? Are any of you musicians or do you see yourself as musicians, or do you work with musicians? I think these are all different disciplines, but we're in this very interdisciplinary world.

FB: No, the three of us, we don't have any background in music, and then little talent to play the instruments. But what I like about sounds is the emotions that they create. I think that's the important thing to us. And then the material of making the sounds, for example, like in our previous works we do have these kinds of installations, triggered by the binary codes, but the speakers, they produce sounds and then we use the sounds of muscles. So we use the EKG machines to grab the sounds of muscles because it’] this kind of microsound that you have never heard before. And then what is interesting for me, the sounds of spasms is like the sounds of a chainsaw, like rhhhhrrr, and then the sounds of fibrillations in your muscles, it sounds like popcorn, popcorn pops.

So this kind of material for sounds is very important to us. How we source the sounds, how these materials relate to the installations, and then how these sounds also produce the emotions to the installations. Like in here, the selections of the vocalists is also important for us, like why we chose the opera singers. Because we felt like, you have a background in opera, you also learned about this technique called “chiaroscuro”, which is the tones of high and low, which is very important for this installation, because we felt if you're in the tones of high and low, we could say that if you are in this kind of like a black and white zone and then you can play between that and then that you have like this kind of like, a gray, a lot of gray area to play with it. And also, a gospel singer because usually if you're a gospel singer, you are trained to praise something. And then in a way, we are collaborating with a gospel singer, it's like she’s always praising how the machine works, glorifying how the machines work..

BL: So the title of your work here is Upon A Machine. What does that mean?

HH: Okay. So the title Upon a Machine came from the song “When You Wish Upon A Star” that we took the chords and notes from and then attached to the music instrument.

It's like when we heard this song from Pinocchio.

And then we felt that the song, the lyrics, when we read the lyrics again, it's really dreamy. It's like nothing is impossible. And then when we try to reflect this song and then see what we want to do with the machine and the humans, then this is our reflection towards the machines.

BL: Do you like the machine?

HH: This one? laugh Of course.

BL: You have a relationship with it. Do you like it?

FB: I think in a way, yes or no because of course, if we go back, the machine feels like an automation machine. I mean, like back in the day, I know the history of automations is talking about something spiritual, but nowadays if you're talking about the machines, it's talking about how efficient are you working on a task? Like how fast are you able to work on a task? Like, I mean I'm walking. I go to The Kitchen by the subway. And then there's always a lot of advertising on AI, and then they always write, “how fast are you gonna work on your spreadsheet?” They always like working with these kinds of words, “fast.” So, also, it's interesting for me. There's also a ChatGPT advertising in this kind of intersection around this area. But the advertising is for ChatGPT, but the way they put two humans working together, like the models, two humans working in a very natural background or environment, it always makes me wonder, hmm, that's something new.

I mean, we're talking about AI, we're talking about technology, but what you're putting on the advertising is so human, so normal. Also, if we're talking about machines, I think of course it makes you more productive, it makes you more efficient. And then the next question is: should we become faster or should we slow down a little bit? I think that's the way to answer about time and speed maybe.

BL: Do you have any questions, audience?

Audience member: When did the idea of working with families come about? Did it start with the children, or the parents?

FB: The parents - I think the families come from my mother. So it started in 2015, when she had her own smartphone and her own WhatsApp group. So, at that time, Tromarama, we've been working with the screen culture and then, it's really funny story because one day before we were talking about the screen culture, she came to me and then asked me in a very motherly way, she asked me and in a didactic way, she said, "Hey, you know, there's, uh, there's a video popping up from my WhatsApp group. You know, there's war happening somewhere in the world." And then I took her phone and I see a video of a real high definition quality game called, uh, Counterstrike.

It's a first person game when there's one person holding a gun and then [they] try to catch another team and then my mother took that video game as a truth, as a reality that there's a war going on in the world. And then from that, oh, we felt oh wow, there's kind of like a distance between the older generations within the technology and then the younger generation that perceives what's happening [in] the technology. And then, I think that's the first time–coming from the parents–our moms with their WhatsApp group and how the image circulated around this WhatsApp group. The second example, in 2023, we're using our family archive inside the video because when Herbert was in his late father’s archives, there's one paperwork that's actually because his father is Chinese-Indonesian. And then back in the 60s, as a Chinese-Indonesian he needed to change his Chinese name into an Indonesian name and there was paperwork for that, and then you just know your father’s Chinese name back then. So yeah, I think from 2019 until now, we have always had an important, like, family archive, and always put it inside our installations or works.

BL: We all know that archives are very important, and they need a lot of care and feeding. You're taking care of your archive?

RH: That's one of the things that we have tried to take seriously from the beginning of our career. We started archiving our works on Blogspot. So we usually, when we produce a work, we post the image, the still image. When we did the video, we posted the still images of the video and the behind the scene pictures.

Before working as a full-time artist, Herbert work[ed] at the advertising agency and I work[ed] in production, in an advertising production house, creating TV commercials as a production assistant. I think from those kinds of work we see that the process and the documentation of the process is quite important and then we try to make documentations of the show in a proper way. I think, at the end, like now, we are very used to it. Having shows like this, we take pictures as soon as possible, and do videos of the installation.

It's a really important thing for us because we have the documentation and other people who want to access our works also can have it on our website. We also show it on our YouTube. At the beginning, I think I remember there was a debate, do we need to post our works online so people can access it very easily? Video was a very fragile medium at the time; it's very easy to copy a video. What makes a copy different? If somebody or an institution collects our video, we give them the video and the certificate. And if we upload it like a screener on YouTube, what's the difference between that? I think having something like an online archive that people can access publicly is very important and I think also working a lot with installations and video, like having a proper archival system, it's also very important.

We had some experience maybe like the late 2000s when some institution collected our work, we still had to submit beta masters. But I think now only digital files, which is easy, but it could easily be damaged or corrupted and we don't have any copies of that. So in a way, a digital archive is really easy to handle, but it's also scary if we don't have proper copies to secure it. or us, archives are really important.

Audience: How important are the physical objects?

RH: Yeah, for instance, for this installation we got some beautiful objects like the cabinet for the TV. If we could bring it back, we would bring it back. But I think it’s the nature of this kind of work. We always wanted this work to travel to another place, and we source the objects locally. It's a pity that we have to donate it back to MFTA. But I think we wanted the work to be always changing, always evolving.

Audience: Do you write software?

RH: Usually we work with a friend that could write codes and help us build the hardware. But because of the wonders of AI, it helps us to create simple codes. In 2017, we outsourced people to create software for us. That was the first time we used Twitter. Then we collected tweets based on hashtags and then we printed out the text from Twitter using like three printers. But since Twitter was bought by Elon Musk and the policy is changing, we decided just to use our archival tweets from 2017. So it's not complicated. It's a very practical way of thinking rather than having somebody recreating a new software to just print out the PDFs from the 2017 archive. Maybe just ask like ChatGPT: “I have this PDF and I want it to spit out in certain intervals, could you help us do basic coding?” and it works. So I could write a code with the help of AI, but I'm not, I'm not confident to say that I'm a coder or something. It just happened that AI is helping ...

BL: Maybe the last question, what's next? You're going off back to Indonesia tomorrow via Istanbul. And then I think you're doing something in July and then August. What is that?

FB: In July we're going to be teaching at ICA Kyoto. Yeah. And then of course also in July we will be having a new video, [Turn On #2] at Midnight Moment in Times Square.

BL: And then aren't you all doing something else? Can you talk about St. Louis

FB: We are also gonna participate in the Counterpublic, in St, Louis, Missouri exhibition.

It's a group show. It's a triennial. There's, maybe 50 artists involved in a triennial and then they will show their work in the public space spread out into St. Louis.

BL: Great. I'm delighted. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you all so much.

HH: Thank you. Thank you so much, Barbara. It was lovely.