September 29 until October 16, 2025 Dutch artist Su Tomesen was in Yogyakarta for realising and filming the performance Parade with 13 ambulant street vendors (pedagang keliling). Most of the sellers she met in 2019-2020 during a residency at Kedai Kebun Forum in Yogyakarta, and with the majority of them Tomesen rehearsed a music composition that she wrote together with composer Sinta Wullur in 2022-2023 at Krack studio. When back in Yogyakarta in 2025 the vendors played the music composition while walking a few streets with their carts (gerobak). Parade took place on October 11, 2025 in the area of Lapangan Minggiran in the south of Yogyakarta.
by Pitra Ayu Hutomo: Artist Su Tomesen with the vendors/players: pak Maruf, mas Ari, bapak-bapak Abdurrahman, Wo, Wagiyo, Sarijo, Nonong, Sugeng, Supomo, Wawan, Tugiman, ibu Katni, pak Bisri
Producer Pitra Ayu Hutomo about Parade by Su Tomesen, 7–11 October 2025, Yogyakarta:
For more than a decade, Dutch artist Su Tomesen has walked the streets of Yogyakarta with a camera, tracing the pulse of everyday life. From her earlier film Jalan (2015)—a fictional day built from real gestures and improvisations of the city—Su’s practice has paid close attention to the ingenuity of street vendors and the materials that circulate through urban life: cardboard softened by rain, tires worn thin, cups and bottles reborn through repair and reuse.
In the performance Parade, rhythm once again becomes a way of seeing. This time, it is not only the shifting weather that sets the tempo, but a sonic composition developed together with Sinta Wullur and Akhrimbi Muhammad, in dialogue with the vendors whose calls and movements shape the city’s beat. I followed their rehearsal process at LAV gallery and the film shoot in Kampung Minggiran, where everyday choreography meets experimental sound.
A procession unfolds—not grand, but intimate. A parade of labor, resourcefulness, and the living architecture of the street, where objects and voices carry histories of survival and imagination. The work observes how a city breathes: through repetition and repair, through sound and improvisation, through people whose presence is never staged yet always performative.
by Su Tomesen