In 2006, after the earthquake in Yogyakarta, Vendy Methodos began his first steps as a street artist by presenting “stalker.” As far as he can remember, he only drew street paintings three times at that time. After a long hiatus, Vendy Methodos came back to his profession or (what he told us) he pursued his hobby which is drawing on the street again in 2011. Then, Methodos was chosen as his new name. Festival Film Dokumenter (FFD) 2020 has the opportunity to collaborate with mural artist Vendy Methodos, as a collaborating artist.
“If I can assess subjectively, from my perspective, my work is used to raise awareness not to heal. To raise the awareness that there are something or other symptoms or phenomena that we sometimes don’t realize, but actually that exist and are close to us. “
Vendy Methodos’ involvement in the FFD event made us curious to dig further on how he views this collaboration. For him, documentary films seem unpopular. This case is inseparable from the fact that documentaries have become a non-mainstream genre and are rarely played in cinema buildings. In Vendy Methodos’ opinion, these kinds of films are almost similar to works of visual art: the essence is to look for something invisible which is actually very close to us. Hence, FFD is interesting, because this kind of festival is able to intervene in the community to be aware of the surrounding conditions.
Despite only getting to know FFD in depth in recent months, Vendy Methodos stated that there was a feeling of joy and excitement when he got contacted to collaborate in this event. He thinks that this is a cross-disciplinary collaboration. “My background is visual art and I was invited to collaborate for the film festival. And, it is a new experience in my career,” he said.
Vendy Methodos made some artworks for FFD 2022. The whole artwork presents a visual of the moving subject. When we asked, why was it like that? He explained that the key word and the main idea of this artwork is gymnastics. It is because gymnastics in Indonesia, which is classified as unpopular exercises, the representation of documentary films in the mind of Vendy Methodos is also the same: it exists, but is not visible. However, on the other hand, they still have their own fans.
He hopes that FFD will always exist to work, intervene, and present films that are sometimes often unnoticed by other Filmmakers. Vendy Methodos, surely, also hopes that his work can be widely known, but the other thing that cannot be marginalized is the hope that the message presented in the artworks can be fully delivered where documentary films are like gymnastics: exists but is unpopular. Recognizing that there are filmmakers who work on introducing documentaries to a wide audience.
Written by Cindy Gunawan | Edited by Vanis
