Bad Times Story
Athonk
Reviewed by Darren Hick

A little while back, in a thread on the Journal's message board, I mentioned that I had yet to broach postmodernism in my reviews. Now, it seems, I cannot avoid it. Athonk's Bad Times Story is so obviously and deeply buried in a postmodern mindset that to critique it without a sensitivity to this tradition would be counterproductive.

But first, Surrealism: Indonesian art, as the foreword explains, is heavily steeped in Surrealism. And Athonk, clearly a participant in the Surrealist tradition, has produced a work strongly imbued with dream-like qualities. Now, for the layman, when I say "Surrealism," it's best that you not envision Salvador Dali's melting clocks. That isn't likely to help you envision Athonk's work. Rather, it's instilled with very personal imagery, deep-seated metaphors, which run along without any real sense of structured chronology. Just like a dream. Things skip from moment to moment held together despite lacking any true narrative cohesion. Which brings me back to where I began...

Athonk's piece is at the same time religious, political and psychological. Yet not in a manner constructed on the basis of commonly-held beliefs or experiences. Athonk's story is based on complicated metaphors he has not deigned to explain to his readers. The reader is, in essence, asked to interpret a reaction without a point of reference to the concepts which served to catalyze this reaction. It's not altogether unlike interpreting the dream of someone with whom one is utterly unfamiliar. In this sense, Athonk in fact has something in common with late pop-art master Keith Haring.

That's about as far as the parallel can be stretched however. Where Haring is iconic, Athonk's work is based on a more narrative template. Where Haring's art is clean and simple, Athonk's is sketchy and rough. Where Haring's iconic metaphors are as void of detail as possible, Athonk's are complicated and fully fleshed-out. Scott McCloud would argue, perhaps, that this allows the reader more of an opportunity to project into Haring's work; TCJ News Editor Michael Dean might disagree (and, in fact, inasmuch states this in his newest Online Editorial.)

I would have to side with McCloud on this one. Athonk's work is replete with odd semi-sequiturs used to, seemingly, comment on the action played out in the narrative -- elements which seem to attempt to fill out the holes in the story -- the interpretive holes, that is. Thus, while the work of Keith Haring seems to fall directly in line with postmodern reworking of Roman Ingarden's "spots of indeterminancy" -- that is, the reader is forced to fill in what the creator leaves out with elements from his or her own experience or imagination -- Athonk's work is a different animal. In Haring's case, each reader is left, in the end, with a wholly different interpretation of the work than every other (the concept is more complicated than this, but that's it in a nutshell). Conversely, what each of Athonk's little semi-sequiturs do is add a complicating factor to the simple formula of Haring's work. The reader is forced to interpret each of these clues and then apply those interpretations to the rest of the story. The other option (decidedly non-postmodern) is to try and figure out what Athonk meant by each of these elements. It's like following clues to some mysterious end.

But, by the end of Bad Times Story the reader is no more enlightened as to the basis of Athonk's story than he was in the beginning. The detective method, apparently, isn't the way to go with this one. In the end, a reader's best bet is to look at Athonk's work as if one were peering through a scrying pool into someone's dreams. So, we come back to Surrealism.

The art style Athonk adapts is not one particularly suited to pleasant dreams. The rough, scratchy penlines have a primal feel which, in concert with the unusual storytelling, gives the book a feeling of outsider art. Athonk certainly has a sense of depth and form, and knows how to portray it visually (the stone heads in the story are evidence enough of this). But he chooses, for the most part, to draw cute little angels (which bring to mind some mythic offspring of Carebears and the Shmoo) and hairy little devils (not altogether unreminiscent of that hairy little thing on The Barba Poppas). They're more iconic than Athonk is capable of, and I have to imagine he's attempting to use them to effect. Perhaps he's giving McCloud's theories some credit. Also, though, Bad Times Story is filled with misspellings (supposedly intentional) and other little elements which hint at an anarchic bent to Athonk's work.

In the end, is Athonk's work good? I imagine he achieved much of what he set out to achieve. It's certainly stimulating in some respects. But is Athonk's work entertaining? Not particularly. This isn't a work you would choose to read on the bus between stops. I believe I'd like to meet the creator, or at least see some prose work by him, so as to give me a legend by which I might be helped to interpret the story. It might help get rid of this mental itch the book seems to have given me.

To better help you understand what they hell I'm talking about, I'd advise you get a copy of Bad Times Story. Contact Athonk in Indonesia at sapto_raharjo@hotmail.com or order Bad Times Story through Che Gilson's _Plastic Planet_ distro. (P.O. Box 2001, Hanford, California, 93232-2001, USA.) Alternatively, you can write to Athonk at: Sosrowijayan Wetan Gt. 1.77, Yogyakarta, 55271, Indonesia.