NIDA recently welcomed academic and artist Gustaff H. Iskander as a guest of our Masters of Cultural Leadership program. The ongoing exchange between NIDA and Common Room, co-founded by Gustaff, is part of an international cross-cultural dialogue about arts practice across the region.
Gustaff Harriman Iskandar grew up moving across remote parts of Indonesia, following his father who worked for a mining company, spending formative years on Singkep Island, where tv and a portable Betamax player became his favourite companions. Captivated by the global space race, science fiction and the illustrated art and science books his father brought home, “this early media landscape,” he reflects, “laid the foundation for my lifelong fascination with art, science and technology.”
Studying at the Bandung Institute of Technology, Gustaff became active in the student movement that ended Indonesia’s New Order regime, and established the Bandung Center for New Media Arts — before co-founding Common Room, now one of Indonesia’s most influential creative organisations.
Common Room began as an art sharing platform and community hub and has evolved into a nonprofit connecting governments, communities and individuals through cultural and internet-based projects, including pioneering work bringing internet infrastructure to remote and Indigenous communities across the archipelago. In 2024, Gustaff was elected an Ashoka Fellow in recognition of that work.
In June 2026, he visited NIDA as part of an ongoing exchange between institutions. We sat down to talk about creative practice, cultural leadership, collaboration and what it means to be an artist in a world that keeps changing underneath your feet.
Common Room has created space for many voices. What does meaningful cultural leadership look like in practice, especially at a grassroots level?
Common Room began as a public participatory art project led by the Bandung Center for New Media Arts – a multidisciplinary organization I co-founded alongside Reina Wulansari, R.E. Hartanto, and T. Ismail Reza in late 2000. This period coincided with the pivotal shift of Web 2.0, an era marked by the rise of blogging and a more open, participatory internet. Inspired by this internet evolution, we recognized the potential of creating a parallel, physical ecosystem. We envisioned a collaborative space where individuals from diverse disciplines and interests could converge, interact, and develop projects tailored to their unique needs, challenges, and preference. To test these ideas, Common Room became a vibrant testing ground, hosting a stream of multidisciplinary discussions, hands-on workshops, exhibitions, performances, and music concerts that bridged the gap between technology, culture, and community. In this regard, Common Room not only serves as a cultural space, but also a third space, or liminal space, where possibilities happen in a real-time environment.
When we established Common Room, we noticed that contemporary art and cultural spaces at the time were often rigid, heavily curated and regulated by certain groups of people or specific circles. In contrast, we opted for an open, fluid, and decentralized model. This approach allowed Common Room to naturally evolve into a vibrant cultural hub where diverse communities in Bandung could freely interact, cross-pollinate, and build new collaborations. This experiment somehow also redefined our understanding of meaningful cultural leadership at the grassroots level.
We realized that cultural practice and leadership should do more than just provide a platform for self-expression; as it also needs to serve as a crucible where collective intelligence, care, aspirations and shared interests can merge. By embracing differences, uncertainty, and creative speculation, we sought to redefine artistic and cultural practice—navigating innovation and creativity to address real-world challenges while actively reflecting the zeitgeist or spirit of our time.
You’ve worked extensively in regional and remote contexts. How does place shape the way creative projects are developed and led?
The development of Common Room is actually the result of cultural interrelations in local and global contexts.
I still remember when the Bandung Center for New Media Arts was invited to participate in the International Symposium for Electronic Arts (ISEA) residency in Helsinki in 2004. It greatly enriched our insights and perspectives, as during that period we were just developing Common Room in Bandung. Interactions with artists from diverse backgrounds were instrumental in the development of our creativity and artistic practice at that time. We subsequently became involved in numerous art projects, both locally and globally. This practice continues to evolve, enabling Common Room to become an organization that continues to develop arts and cultural practices oriented toward collaborative processes and multidisciplinary artistic practices.
Interconnectedness between place and artistic practice is important, as an artist can also become a nomad that is always on the move.
For emerging artists, how important is collaboration in building a sustainable creative practice?
I can’t imagine how artists and cultural practitioners can work in total isolation these days. Even when perceiving and imagining our daily lives, the neurons in our brains need to connect and interact with each other. Likewise, in everyday life, artists need direct interaction with various layers of reality. Encountering real experiences that can enrich our imagination and perception of everyday life, even though our current realities are increasingly mediated by machines and digital devices.
Collaboration and interaction with diverse individuals and communities, as well to interact with various situations in daily life are essential ingredients for artists. This process not only enriches the creative process but is also crucial for discovering new experiences and perspectives, as well as our collective intelligence. I believe that artists are autonomous subjects who create value and are involved in the meaning making process. On the other hand, I also see artists as entangled atomic particles who construct our shared narratives and actively engage in the world-making process.
What advice would you give to students who want to use their creative skills to drive social or community impact?
Just focus on the journey, not the result as the impact will be defined by space and time.Apart from technical skills, this will require human empathy and intuition.
In a rapidly changing digital landscape, how can artists maintain authenticity and cultural integrity?
During the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, I read a short article by Arundhati Roy. If I’m not mistaken, the title was “The pandemic is a portal.”Her narrative is pretty clear and simple. She views the pandemic as a turning point in the history of human civilization, offering a choice to leave the past behind and move into the new world. I suspect that in the context of the rapid development of technology and the digital landscape, the situation is more or less the same. Within the ongoing rupture and uncertainty, an artist was always confronted with options. For me, we need to embrace it as part of our journey.
Historically speaking, the artist’s artistic abilities have always been contested by machines. One example is when the development of art and cultural practice came across with the invention of the printing press and photography. There are times when artistic creation and cultural expression interact intimately with technology. However, there are also situations where artists declare war with machines and technology. I believe there is a common perspective where artists always position themselves within the boundaries of liminal spaces, exploring possibilities to find authentic value and meaning. Amidst the onslaught of new and emerging technologies, including the rapidly changing digital landscape and the rise of algorithms and artificial intelligence, I think artists will always encounter various challenges and opportunities to redefine authenticity and cultural integrity. Finding its way out from the belly of the beast.
Gustaff H. Iskandar visited NIDA in November 2025. Common Room Networks Foundation is based in Bandung, Indonesia — commonroom.info
Applications for the 2027 intake of NIDA’s Masters of Fine Arts (Cultural Leadership) are now open.
This activity received grant funding from the Australia-Indonesia Institute of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.