A Night on the Streets With Jakarta's BTV Graffiti Crew

It's past midnight and SEND7 is hanging from a pedestrian overpass above Jalan Warung Buncit. I'm standing below, watching the Jakarta-based graffiti artist work with two other members of BTV021: BONGR and DARTE1. Within minutes SEND7 (pronounced "sendseva") is painting his signature throw-up in large swoops on a blank tin billboard. Twenty minutes later SEND7's worn Nikes are back on solid ground as the BTV crew mounted their weathered Vespas to head to another stop on their all-night bombing run.

"I could bomb a clean spot, and three weeks later in the same spot and there's new handstyles, new names," SEND7 says. "When you go around Jakarta, the effect is amazing because now every meter you see [paint] streaks on the walls, even if they're toys, but graffiti is more alive than ever."

The BTV021 crew (or BTV for short) was founded by DARTE1 and the late CNGR, along with other guys from their same neighborhood: YUK07, HAPZ, TIROE1, NELI4, FAKER, BAKE, KAJE, DOEMS, and SEND7.

SEND7 and the BTV crew are not famous names in the Indonesian street art scene like Darbotz, Eko Nugroho, or POPO. They don't even consider themselves artists. For the BTV crew, graffiti is the realm of the writer. It's more than just art on the streets; it's the voice of the streets, a living record of the beefs, the crews, and the writers who call the Indonesian capital home.

"Street art is normal art that's brought onto the streets," he says. "But graffiti was born in the streets."

If you live in Jakarta, you've undoubtedly seen SEND7's work. His tag, large balloon letters with a minimalistic six-point star, is everywhere. The tag is purposely simplistic. It's the kind of graffiti made for quick hit-and-runs, not the kind of complex murals of his contemporaries. And his contentious relationship with those on the "street art" side of the scene has, at times, boiled over on social media.

I first heard of SEND7 from a Instagram post by Darbotz. Darbotz is a famous graffiti artist from South Jakarta, whose black-and-white scale patterns and wild-toothed character called KONG have received international attention. The Instagram post showed seven of Darbotz's murals buffed over with balloon letters and six-point star. The culprit, SEND7 had zero internet presence.

SEND 7 was not an easy person to find. I reached out to other graffiti artists in Jakarta, but most were a dead end. Some said SEND7 purposely avoided social media as part of some sort of old school dedication to the craft. Others said he was mentally ill and didn't even have a phone. Eventually, after a week of asking around, SEND7 found me. He added me on a messaging app and, after some negotiation, agreed to meet for an interview—as long as he could bring along some other members of his crew.

I met SEND7, BONGR, and DARTE1 outside a 7-Eleven in Panglima Polim. They were dressed in bombed-out sneakers and hoodies, purposely to hide their identity. The three were ready for a cross-city bombing run that would systematically target both street sides, and a few particularly dangerous spots.

In the beginning, none of them were eager to talk. We were driving across town, heading toward Tendean and then Mampang Prapatan before someone actually turned to address me.

BONGR explained that graffiti was, to him, no different than illegal advertising. But instead of promoting a brand, or a business, he was promoting himself. The BTV crew was more focused on tags and throw-ups than flashier murals because they form the foundations of graffiti as a style. It's something that harkens back to the roots of graffiti culture—rebellion, urban decay and hip-hop. To BONGR and the BTV crew, graffiti is still a criminal act. Street art may have legitimized the scene, but BTV isn't concerned with artistic pretensions.

"Where's the street in it?" BONGR said of a famous street artist. "He's claiming; he's doing street art. But where's the street part? Let graffiti be graffiti and street art be street art."

The BTV crew are aggressively vocal on how pop culture graffiti has become. Their purist style of bombing is a method of fighting back against the mainstream street artists who they claim are using the artform as a way to generate hype for commercial work.

"Artists are using free advertising in the streets" SEND7 said. "Then they go back into their space, whatever that is."

We eventually stopped by an empty pedestrian overpass above a busy highway in the south of the city. The footbridge was a regular hang spot for the crew. Then SEND7, finally safe at home, addressed the Darbotz situation.

"Why did I draw over Darbotz? Because he took my spot," he explained. "There was an empty spot to the left besides mine and he drew over mine and left some over."

The whole thing had spun out of control, generating so much social media drama that it went over what BTV saw as the real issue. Darbotz struck first.

"The point is I took a stance, I don't care that he's been here longer," he said. "If he took my spot, I have to take it back."

I reached out to Darbotz for comment, but he didn't respond.

The drama and attention was a clear sign of something BTV said is wrong with Jakarta's graffiti scene: It's gotten too soft. The scene's pioneers such as KIMS, LUCENT, GRAVER, KROM, were kings in the streets, but today's artists and writers are only interested in the visual aesthetic of graffiti, not the culture. It's become a contest to see who can use the fanciest techniques and most-expensive cans of paint, they said. BTV is showing younger writers that graffiti is more about expression than technique. It's about finding an outlet for aggression in a sprawling, overcrowded city more concerned with money and consumerism than expression.

"Jakarta is hard enough," BONGR said. "You don't have to act soft to fix the Jakarta scene for it to be weak and peaceful. My opinion is you have to be harder than Jakarta, be hard in Jakarta so people who'd come here respect it."

Most of the guys in the BTV crew grew up together as neighborhood kids, united by their interests in street culture like graffiti, hip-hop, skateboarding and BMX.

"Because our crew wasn't made intentionally for graffiti, I had a few friends who were, so to say, already under one roof, " DARTE1 said. "It was to unite us all, we were BTV.

"My friend, the late (CNGR) was a real hooligan, a diehard Persija hooligan. I was doodling around writing BTV. 'What's BTV' he said. 'Batavia, I made it for you'."

Batavia is the old name for Jakarta, back when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony. But the Batavia the BTV guys had in mind wasn't anyone's Jakarta. It was a city that belong to them and them alone.

"Only these guys catch my eye," DARTE1 said of the crew. "Unless I go into some complex, somebody else's complex. Then I'd see other tags, but on my track, on my way to campus, nobody else shows up."

BTV's style of graffiti is dangerous. SEND7 broke his arm falling from an advertising lightbox in Kemang. A security guard once cracked him over the head with his own spray paint cans.

"I'd been beaten up by security guards," BONGR added. "I got hit with some bamboo at a theatre in Pamulang."

But what started as an outlet for destructive urges is now a regular part of their lives. SEND7 said going out on nighttime bombing runs was as regular brushing his teeth or taking a shower. Why, I asked, do they keep doing this in the face of arrest, assault, and internet drama? What's the point of spending so much time on tags and throw-ups with zero interest in turning their work into commercial street art?

"It's about me," SEND7 said. "It's to prove that I exist, that I was here in the world. It's my history."

Renaldo Gabriel is VICE Indonesia's late-night correspondent. He's a bad writer, but a decent cook.