Nuraini Juliastuti

Nuraini Juliastuti has an untethered physical presence as the main medium for communication with families and a rich circle of allies in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This propels her to actively pursue creative ways of producing entanglements in contexts that are not limited by geographical presence. She sees publishing, networking, and organising collective solidarity as activities that nurture a sense of friendship.

In this regard, maintaining a trans-local relationship with her comrades at Kunci Study Forum & Collective means sharing an inclination to embrace uncertainties as a productive zone in which one can reclaim the cultural field, deflating formal education institutions, and eschewing the professionalisation of intellectual thought

Kunci is founded on the wish to make a critical intellectual contribution by developing an alternative space for collective learning and radical pedagogies. It reflects the spirit of the generation of 1998, who focused their democratic struggles by reclaiming various cracks in public spaces. As Nuraini has grown older with Kunci, it has become a gathering place for people from diverse backgrounds and generations: a space for listening to intergenerational social and political trauma. The question of how this can be directed to realise collective action is part of the ongoing conversation amongst Kunci members. 

In 2020, Nuraini took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam. In this role, she worked as part of the Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation project. Her latest work under the framework of the fellowship was organising Amsterdam Assembly: Letting Go of Having to Speak All the Time in Framer Framed, 7-9 October 2021.