F.X. Harsono provokes the viewer to consider the infiltration of violence into everyday life here with a simple question: What Would You Do If These Crackers Were Real Pistols? The installation, comprising a pile of pistol-shaped crackers, desk and notebook for audience’s responses, is among Indonesia’s earliest participatory artworks. Harsono was a key figure in Indonesia’s New Arts Movement, a group which emerged in 1975 and sought change through new art forms and contemporary practices. He created this work in 1977 as a political statement against Indonesia’s then-President Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime.
