Interview with Daniel Ziv
Author of Jakarta Inside Out

How would you categorize Jakarta Inside Out? Is doesn’t feel like a practical guidebook, but it’s not a typical coffee table book either. Who’s supposed to read this book?
I wouldn’t say it’s a guidebook in any normal sense. It doesn’t list hotels and restaurants, and it’s certainly not about sightseeing tips. I think the book will mean different things to different audiences. For visitors and newly arrived residents, it’s an honest, entertaining glimpse into a rather confusing city that doesn’t usually slow down to explain itself. To long-time expats and Indonesians, it will hopefully shed new light on angles of the city they hadn’t really examined closely before. It’s organized in a fun, alphabetical structure, and is packed with strange anecdotes, stories, facts and unusual photos. Many Indonesian friends who’ve seen the manuscript said they never knew that so much was going on beneath the surface of their own city. But if I had to declare a ‘genre’ for the book, I would say it’s some sort of contemporary urban lexicon, or a pop culture exploration of a teeming Southeast Asian city. Does that count as a ‘genre’? Hmmm…I guess not.

What’s the fascination with Jakarta - a large, polluted city dismissed by many guidebooks as a place to avoid?
Although I’m a big a fan of nature, I guess I’m really a city person at heart. I love the energy, the choices, the tense edge that marks urban environments. If nature is about harmony, then cities, it seems to me, are about rhythm. We associate landscapes with nature, but big cities are rich landscapes, too. Urban landscapes may not be as pretty, but they seem to contain more layers and tension and drama. Jakarta in particular feels like endless theater to me, a place where stories unfold every day – absurd, hilarious, touching, infuriating stories – stories that run the whole social gamut from working class becak drivers to glamorous celebrities and corrupt senior government officials. It’s fascinating theater because it’s real and often quite profound. I’m also interested in how things work – in what makes this city tick, so to speak. Many chapters in the book adopt a sort of ‘pop anthropology’ approach, offering a ‘political economy’ of various phenomena, like street musicians, road jockeys, the ‘demonstration industry’ and so on. How does it all operate? Some of it is pretty intriguing stuff. I hope.

There’s a lot of humor in Jakarta Inside Out, but also an underlying critical tone directed at the powers that be. You’ve been a very outspoken critic in the media against the governor and municipality. Is this book just a thinly veiled vendetta against Governor Sutiyoso or his administration?
When discussing a city, I think it’s naïve and even dishonest to ignore the darker side of what goes on there - the inequality, the corruption, the injustice. Too many guidebooks present Jakarta as this sterile, happy little place, a shining example of development and progress. It’s laughable. Anyone who’s opened their eyes in this city knows how problematic it is in reality. Jakarta has beautiful sides to it – I move around this city and encounter such amazing people and I love just watching them do what they do, because they do these incredible things, whether it’s some kid who each evening after school drags his tired body on to public buses and recites political poetry to commuters, or wealthy residents who show up at neighborhood posts to contribute emergency rations to flood victims, or just our staff driver at the magazine, who’s one of the most professional, honest, hard-working, generous people I’ve ever met, and who I hope some day will become Governor. So for me it’s not about officially celebrated monuments and toll roads and theme parks, but the human energy and resolve of ordinary people, which is everywhere. And while this book does not mince words, and sheds light on institutional cruelty and stupidity and tries to tell the truth about Jakarta, it was also conceived as a love letter to a city I’m proud to call home. It’s not a bitter book. It just tries to be honest. But back to the question, let me say this: I think Sutiyoso’s reelection to another five-year term is simply a baffling thing given his administration’s disastrous record so far. But I’ve pretty much given up trying to explain how that can happen. Jakartans deserve way better, yet nobody seems to be doing anything about it. It’s depressing, and a lot of the time it makes me want to vomit into the nearest polluted canal.

How long have you been working on this book?
Technically, in terms of pounding the pavement with this book in mind, only about six months. But in a sense I guess I’ve been accumulating material since moving here around four years ago, and through numerous visits long before that. Also, as editor of Djakarta! for over two years, a big part of my job, as I understood it, was observing and trying to interpret the city. So I already knew my subject quite well. But the book adopts a very different style than the magazine, and approaches the city in a different way. It’s much more personal. And it assumes less local knowledge on the part of the reader. The magazine is much more nuanced, as city magazines should be.

But why a book? How did it come about?
I actually stole the concept for Jakarta Inside Out from another urban A to Z book, one about Vancouver by a fellow Canadian, Douglas Coupland, the guy who wrote Generation X and Miss Wyoming. But let’s not dwell on plagiarism right now. Basically, I had all this material in my head and quite a lot to say about the city. I thought it would make a cool book, and I showed it to Mark Hanusz at Equinox. He loved the idea. Mark and I had been working together informally for a few years and always said we’d do a project together one day. We’re the same age, we’ve each launched independent publishing ventures in the city, and we share the belief that there’s tons of fresh material waiting to be written and published on Indonesia. So it was a fun match, and the project took off quickly, and here we are.

Photos feature prominently in the book, and tend to be striking and sometimes very unusual – blurred images, strange angles, quite a bit of motion. Was this deliberate?
I wanted to avoid stale, motionless, postcard impressions of the city. Instead, I looked for visual representations of Jakarta’s human character, its fast pace, its quirkiness, and the surprises it offers at every turn. I didn’t see much added value in churning out yet more ‘beautiful’ photos of Sunda Kelapa harbor, or an aerial shot of Monas. Visually, Jakarta has way more to say. So most of the photos were shot quite literally at street level, often with sharp contrasts between foreground and background – the way we often see things in reality. An image of a fried food vendor is shot from the perspective of a spring roll; a photo of street musicians is blurred, cheeky chaos, with one kid giving ‘the finger’ straight to the lens; a karaoke image is shot through the handle of a beer mug. About half the book’s photos are my own, but the rest – thankfully - were shot by some of the city’s top photographers, and for many of them it was a chance to go a bit crazy, stylistically. They were often a bit shocked by the kind of assignments I gave them, but almost always returned from the field with really funky material.

What’s next? Any more book projects in the works?
Lots of ideas, sure. But I’d like to see the response to Jakarta Inside Out first, because it really is very different, experimental almost. If the format works, I’m thinking with Equinox of adapting it to other fast-paced cities in Southeast Asia, Bangkok being a strong first candidate. But for other cities I’d probably assume the role of a coordinator rather than writer, because to remain true to this formula the author should know the city quite intimately. I’m also playing with an idea a friend floated a while back to publish a kind of anthology of ‘New Writing’ on Indonesia – longer, non-fiction essays by young writers with a more personal, impressionistic, contemporary angle, and perhaps a bit of travelogue thrown in. A lot of the writing on Indonesia tends to be either very analytical and political, or the kind of cultural, ornamentalist stuff that doesn’t tackle contemporary issues too well. So I’m imagining something with a strong narrative that really tries to capture a sense of place.

For more information please contact Equinox at: (62-21) 829-7734
Publisher e-mail: editor@equinoxpublishing.com

The A to Z to quirky Jakarta
Endy M. Bayuni, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Jakarta Inside Out; By Daniel Ziv; Equinox Publishing; Jakarta and Singapore, 2002; 184 pp

One of the things about Jakarta that I still can't figure out is the logic of motorists driving through a traffic circle. The convention seems to be that motorists entering the circle take priority over those already in it. It's a sure recipe for chaos.

During the morning rush hour, traffic around the circles, and on all roads leading to them, is bound to come to a complete standstill. If you drive along the main road in Pondok Indah, South Jakarta, in the morning, you know exactly what I mean.

But then Jakarta is full of such idiosyncrasies. It's a city that many people -- and I am not only talking about tourists, but also long-time residents such as myself -- find baffling, if not mind-boggling.

Those who find the situation in Jakarta impossibly frustrating give up and leave town. But for some 10 million people, as chaotic as it may seem, Jakarta is the place they like to call home, whether by conscious decision or not.

Jakarta is not exactly an easy place to live, but millions of people have settled in here to live and to work, to build a career and to start a family. Some struggle just to make ends meet. Whether they like it or not, they have to live with many of the quirky aspects of the city.

Everyone has a story to tell about how they cope with the problems and challenges, but has anyone ever tried to make some sense out of the chaos that this city has now become?

Daniel Ziv has.

And he has done it eloquently as well as wittily, and with plenty of humor in Jakarta Inside Out. The book is the author's collection of short articles describing and explaining, or at least trying to explain, some of the quirky aspects that make this vibrant capital tick, even when it seems to many people to be on the verge of breaking down.

There are 65 articles on a wide range of topics: stories about the gay community, waria (transsexuals) and typical bule (Western Caucasian people); about people in odd professions like asongan (street vendors), U-turn police and umbrella boys; about notable and less-than-notable landmarks, from Blok M and Glodok, to Jl. Jaksa and Puncak; about food and drinks like durian, es (ice), gorengan (fried snack), jamu (herbal medicine) and Krating Daeng energy beverage; about urban problems like macet (traffic), floods and slums.

The book talks about the old and recently acquired pastimes of Jakartans, like the craze for karaoke, the mall culture, golf, pigeon racing, salon/cream bath; and about distinctive modes of public transportation, from becak (pedicab), bajaj (motorized pedicab) and ojek (motorcycle taxi), to the Metromini buses. It also has sections depicting the darker sides of the city, like violent street justice and sweatshops.

As the author says in the introduction, Inside Out "is a snapshot of a 21st century Southeast Asian city bursting at the seams, but plugging along nonetheless; of ordinary people in their urban landscape; of culture and pop culture".

Going by the depth of the articles, and the clever way they are written, Ziv has done his homework. Having lived in Jakarta since 1998, and having spent a good many of those four years setting up and then editing djakarta! magazine, he has the right qualifications to write such an authoritative book.

He did the necessary legwork, or as he describes his research method, by "hopping buses with street musicians, checking out bad-ass nightclubs, winding through town on motorbike taxis, and pounding the pavement in China town".

Such ground-level research paid off handsomely because he has come up with crucial little details that many long-time residents are not even aware of. The section on Pigeon Racing (Page 110) was revealing to me personally. Having little interest in this pastime, only now I learn that the ultimate winner of the race is the horniest male pigeon, because the prize for the champion is the right to mate with the female pigeon.

Each article is accompanied by a carefully selected photos, which in many instances paints more than a thousand words.

The section on Demo (Page 32) carries a series of photos of three street demonstrations, taken on different occasions, at different times and for different causes. Each has the same man taking part in the protests. That is sufficient to tell us about a new profession that has come about from the 1998 reform movement: professional demonstrators for hire. No caption is needed.

The book also runs eight funny caricatures depicting typical Jakartans -- a neighborhood local, a political activist, a coffee house tart, a mall babe, a society lady, a neighborhood thug, a bar bule, and a lady-boy busker -- by Benny and Mice.

It ends with 10 alternative things to do in Jakarta, and five wild and crazy ideas for Jakarta's governor, although Governor Sutiyoso would be crazy not to take up on Ziv's suggestions.

The book is not meant to be an all encompassing story of Jakarta and its inhabitants. That would require volumes of books. But more than just a personal account of the author's encounters with the idiosyncratic, it is a book that provides a glimpse of the bustling city and the contemporary culture of many of its people.

While Inside Out is no guide book, it guides you to understand Jakarta a little better. That understanding, for some people, could be the difference in deciding whether to stay or leave town.

Understanding some of the crazy little things we find in Jakarta could make living here a little bit more bearable. A light and entertaining book, it makes compelling reading for visitors and residents alike.

-- Endy M. Bayuni

Taken from The Jakarta Post

Real Lives in The Big City
By Michael Vatikiotis
Issue cover-dated October 31, 2002
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Bangkok, by William Warren. Talisman. £14.95 ($23)
Jakarta Inside Out, by Daniel Ziv. Equinox. $19.99

THERE IS SOMETHING jarring about writing by Western expatriates who attempt to capture Asia. The genre tends to be rooted in the colonial past, though more recently it has acquired seedy overtones. Yet, for all there is to recoil from in clichéd depictions of the exotic East, well-told stories can be a pleasure to read. Two new offerings fit this bill.

William Warren's Bangkok is a neat distillation of history and commentary from a veteran observer who has lived in the city for more than four decades. The other book, Jakarta Inside Out by Daniel Ziv, marries the compelling and bizarre character of Indonesia's capital to the new hip publishing format that is transforming coffee-table publishing into pop art.

I've lived in both cities for long periods, so I approached both books with my own expatriate baggage, inclined to dismiss them. I imagine Bill Warren sighing: Another visitor challenging the life of a lotus-eater. Too bad, Ziv might say in his annoyingly funky style.

Bangkok begins as a more-or-less straightforward history of the city. Warren is something of an expert on the subject, having taught Thai culture for years. Even for someone like me who thinks he knows a thing or two about Bangkok, Warren reveals some surprising insights, nooks and crannies--like the rare visit he pays to the forbidden inner palace grounds that were home to the old Thai kings' stable of wives, and the little-known fact that the present day Sukhumvit Road area was known in the 19th century as the "sea of mud."

Warren also brings to the fore an often-neglected aspect of Bangkok's history and contemporary character--that the city is populated mainly by people of Chinese descent. In the past two years, Bangkok's governor has presided over official celebrations of Chinese New Year, and last year the prime minister, himself of Chinese descent, dropped by.

The writing is well-crafted but sadly sparse, and I wanted to know more. The history is detached, and Warren brings feeling into the story of Bangkok only when he comes to the modern age. Bangkok, he writes, "has a long history of shrugging off efforts at sensible planning . . ." Paradoxically, as he points out, the city's chaotic nature is part of its appeal.

Warren's observations of the contemporary city are spot-on. He writes that, though not readily apparent, Bangkok is a city of non-stop prayer. "At any given moment day or night, thousands of its residents are devoutly pleading with some unseen force to grant their most urgent wishes." Then there's the wonderfully observed "lure of self-invention" that makes the city a magnet for the shyster, the fraud and the escape artist. All this is wrapped up in the ever-present allure of a city devoted to the pursuit of pleasure.

Allure is also at the centre of Ziv's approach to Jakarta. He calls the book "a love letter to a city" and asks the reader not to expect a conventional guide. Yet he manages to cram in almost everything that evokes Jakarta for those who know it. From the acrid smell of clove cigarettes to the smoke-belching three-wheel bajaj and the brightly coloured sickly-sweet roadside confection es teler--all nicely illustrated with some edgy photography. There's high life and low life, sex and despair, arranged and collated in alphabetical order with an emphasis on factual description and slick display, rather than fluid prose.

Ziv expertly weaves city life with the tumultuous politics of the past five years. From the student demonstrations that helped bring down Suharto, to the hardships of ordinary city folk brought on by the financial crisis of 1997, there's no escaping the impact of politics in modern Jakarta.

The garish pop design of the Jakarta book won't appeal to everyone, and its format is hard to follow without some knowledge of the city and a lot of patience. But a lot of facts are crammed into the pages--how much the average roadside cigarette vendor takes home; what happens to a bus when it runs over a pedestrian; and the increasing incidence of rough street justice. I recommend it for anyone who lives in the city and travels around behind the tinted windows of air-conditioned cars and who, consequently, doesn't see much of the city's seamy underside.

Michael Vatikiotis is editor of the REVIEW

Taken from FEER

Easy-to-read humorous exploration of Indonesia’s frenzied capital
By John Einar Sandvand
Asia Observer

(December 16, 2002): This is not a guidebook in traditional terms. Rather it is a collection of snapshots of the Indonesian capital – many of them taken from a surprising angle.

The text is divided into short thematic pieces illustrated by quite exceptional photographs. Readers learn about topics like durian, love hotels, the Jakarta gays, piracy, the infamous nightclub Tanamur, the bule (expats), road jockeys, energy drinks,etc.

Daniel Ziv has lived in Jakarta for four years – and started up "djakarta! – The City Life Magazine".

"Jakarta is not what you’d call a beautiful place. It’s a chaotic maze of low-lying slums, gleaming skyscrapers and imposing toll roads, enveloped in a gigantic cloud of pollution and trapped in hopeless gridlock", writes Ziv.

However, despite the city’s lack of sophistication, Ziv’s book is really a declaration of love to Jakarta, and, most of all, to its people.

For myself, I have visited Jakarta 7-8 times as a journalist. Thus I thought I knew the city pretty well. Daniel Ziv has proven me wrong. And I enjoyed it through every page. It is funny, entertaining, educational and well written.

Planning Your Travels by the Book
BY ARYN BAKER

Jakarta, plugged in
Less a guidebook than an alphabet book of Indonesia's capital, Daniel Ziv's Jakarta Inside Out is a curious hybrid that will have a hard time finding a place on bookstore shelves. Which is a pity. The slim volume is graced with striking photographs of city life, but the paperback format and irreverent, witty observations keep it firmly out of the coffee-table book genre. The 60-odd short essays on subjects ranging from the ubiquitous Asongan (vendors who ply their wares through the city's equally ubiquitous traffic jams), to bules (resident foreigners), nonkong (the art of hanging out) and waria (ladyboys) make up the ideal Jakarta primer, perfect for tourists who want to peek below the surface, or bule who want to know their adopted city better. And all the while it manages to avoid the exotic clichés prevalent in most books on Indonesia. In fact, Jakarta Inside Out is cheekily stamped "Wayang Free," certifying that there are no representations—visual, metaphorical or otherwise—of the traditional Indonesian shadow puppets. Now that's something worth putting on your coffee table.

Taken from Time Asia