Surviving Through Untranslatability

This lecture conversation traces how translating lived experiences grapples with opacity and honors irreducibility.

The lecture conversation between Tamarra, Brigitta Isabella, and Ferdiansyah Thajib ventures into the ethically charged terrain of translation, probing how acts of interpretation and meaning-making are entangled with opacity, incommensurability, and uneven power relations. Rather than approaching translation as a mere exercise in linguistic conversion, the discussion foregrounds its ethical and political stakes, drawing attention to how certain experiences, affects, and epistemologies resist easy legibility and instead call for modes of engagement that honor their irreducibility. 

Drawing on their collaborative experience of writing and translating “Surviving through In(visibility): A Ngalor Ngidul Conversation” (2020), the three contributors invite you to examine how translation can open possibilities toward more situated, accountable, and relational forms of engagement.

Event language: English and Indonesian with English translation

Tamarra (no pronouns) is a self-taught artist who moved to Yogyakarta in 2008 and worked as a street busker. Between 2011-2013, Tamarra joined an arts project titled Makcik Project, which marked the beginning of Tamarra’s personal practice in visual arts. Tamarra’s work discusses issues of gender and sexuality, the histories of non-binary people in Indonesia, religion, and humanity. Tamarra has been involved in various arts projects and exhibitions, among them: Ancient MSG (2015) at Gertrude Contemporary, Australia; Biennale Jogja XV–Ekuator #5: ‘Do we live in the same playground?’ (2019); Jakarta Biennale (2021) ESOK; and ARTJOG MMXXII Expanding Awaerness (2022).

Brigitta Isabella (she/her) encounters and mediates people, objects, and discourses through various platforms of knowledge production at the intersection between art history, critical theories, and activism. She researches, writes, edits, and organizes with KUNCI Study Forum and Collective, and translocal editorial collective Southeast of Now: New Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art(NUS Press). Brigitta has edited several books, among others, Mengasah Asuh: Migrant Mother-Workers, Care Work, and Revolutionary Love (Beranda Perempuan Migran, 2023) and Beribu Surat: Anthology of Feminist Letters from Indonesia (with Shinta Febriany, Peretas, 2024). She is now teaching at the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, ISI Yogyakarta.

Ferdiansyah Thajib (any pronouns) is a researcher and educator whose work focuses on queer worldmaking processes and affective entanglements in everyday life. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, where he teaches psychological anthropology and gender and sexuality studies.. Alongside his academic work, Ferdi has been actively engaged in cultural production, working as an artist, translator, and curator with an emphasis on the transformative potential of self-organization through studying together. These interests are closely tied to his involvement in the KUNCI Study Forum & Collective. He is co-editor of Affective Dimensions of Fieldwork and Ethnography (Springer, 2019) and Embracing Faith and Desire: Queer and Feminist Engagements with Islam and Christianity as Lived Religions (Routledge, 2025).