Nongkrong: the creative collective bringing us Indonesian-inspired hangout culture

Hi Moira, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and Darryl and how Nongkrong Fest came about?

We grew up in the diaspora. I moved to Melbourne when I was four, he moved when he was 10 and we didn’t really have an Indonesian community and had slowly become less connected to Indonesia.

From about 2022, Darryl and I had independently gone through these journeys of rediscovering – or discovering – our Indonesian backgrounds for the first time, by discovering new music and food, and we wanted to share it. We thought maybe we could do an event together. So in 2024, we ended up making a program of five events over the course of a week.

That was the first Nongkrong Festival.

My background is in hospitality and food, so the events are mostly food events to start off with. That first year, it was pop-up dinners at various friends’ restaurants, like Florian, Julie’s, Cam’s, and then a long lunch at Hope Street into a big day party at Collingwood Yards. We were maybe overly ambitious but really had best people around us supporting us.

We’d felt like the way that Indonesian culture had been presented to us had largely been through the lens of very traditional iterations of culture that we couldn’t really resonate with as kids who grew up in the diaspora. That first Nongkrong, our aim was to just throw a party for our friends, to show them that this is what we see as being Indonesian culture.

It started as a one-off. It was just the two of us and we didn’t really expect people to resonate with it, but it just grew from there. And that’s how we met the rest of the Nongkrong team.

Last year you ran Sarapan – a breakfast festival – as part of Open Air at Fed Square. What can people expect for Nongkrong – pasar senja this year?

Sarapan was all about transporting people to mornings in Indonesia where it’s a lot of taichi, aerobics, gamelan happening in food areas. Whereas this year, we’re leaning more into that ritual around twilight, when the sun sets in Indonesia. Everyone finishes works and the markets open, and everyone unwinds. Pasar Senja is about bringing everyone together to do that.

Nongkrong’s events have always been around creating this sense of timelessness when it comes to hanging out, without a start or finish time. In that way, this event is still pretty similar to Sarapan where you can come in at any point between 3pm and 10pm, and there’s always something you could be doing, whether it’s eating, checking out the market, listening to music, doing a little workshop.

And who is the Nongkrong team?

Alongside Darryl, we have Yazzy and Martin who do the music and dance programming. I’ve got Astari helping me out by managing the food stalls and making sure people are fed. Gita stocking the market, Ewan leading volunteers, and Neko is our production designer, in charge of making the space look very twilight-fair vibes. And Tito, who is developing the weaving workshop.

It’s a group of really ambitious and really committed and hardworking people. Naturally, festivals sort of demand so much time, and the team is really a dream team. Everyone brings their own expertise into the space, and we all challenge each other and really push each other to do the best that we can.

Before doing the first Nongkrong, Darryl and I had no Indonesian friends, and now we’ve got a whole community of them.

So what are some of the highlights that people can look forward to for the Pasar Senja?

Ali is going to be the big one. Three-piece groovy, jazzy, spiritually, Arabic-y, soul-y music, from Jakarta.

We’ve got Candra Darusman, which is really exciting. In the ’80s, he pioneered Indonesian jazz and pop, and he’s one of the Aunties, and he’s playing. That’s actually a really cute full-circle moment because his son, Rino, played in the first ever Nongkrong, and now his dad’s playing, which is this really lovely intergenerational thing. 

And we’ve also got Komang, who was our music programmer last year, also playing. We’ve got some really fun hip hop and contemporary dancers.

But in addition to what we did last year, we’ve also got this epic design market that we’ve organised where there’s lots of stalls selling products from different Indonesian makers.

There’s a weaving workshop where people can come in and weave some photographs together with an artist who has that as their practice and everyone can put together collective artwork.

And for me personally, I’m pretty excited about the food program, because I organised a lot of that. We’ve got some really great Indonesian restaurants who are doing some very classic dishes like Makan and Warkop who are in the CBD, and Diana’s kitchen, who is just one of the stalwarts and legend Aunties.

We’re doing a little Nongkrong gerobak – or street food cart – in collaboration with Manzé, which is this Mauritian wine bar in North Melbourne, very known and well-loved by many. Their kitchen is made up of chefs from all different diasporas, and they’re all working together to riff on some classic dishes. There’s going to be Indonesian corn fritters, but with a Mauritian twist with fermented peach hot sauces and fried banana with rum cream. So those little snacks are going to be really yummy and fun.

So come hungry.

Come hungry. And there’ll be satays and grilled corn and all these very nostalgic snacks that I think people who grew up in Indonesia, have lived in Indonesia, even visited Indonesia will be like, ‘Whoa!’

It’ll be multi-sensory, the smells and sounds of Indonesia is the vibe of what we’re going for, I think.

What is your top pick of the snacks people should try at Nongkrong – pasar senja?

I reckon it’s either going to be the chicken satay ayam from Makan or the Manzé corn fritter.

Can you tell me a bit about what’s at the design market?

There’s be lots of zines that are just amazing and designed in Indonesia and made in Indonesia by Indonesian artists. There’s Nongkrong merch that we do in collaboration with Peachy Merch who upcycle tees. It’s mainly Indonesian makers, but then also some makers who’ve spent time in Australia and are our friends because they’ve been here in Melbourne.

It’s a bit of a Nongkrong-curated Indonesian arts market. Indonesia has a very cool, emerging, young creative scene that I feel like people don’t see very much of here in Australia. It’s all stuff that we think people in Melbourne would love. Kind of like ‘art book fair’ vibes.

Anything else people can look forward to?

We’ve got Patriot Mumkin there, who’s an artist running the weaving workshop. His whole practice is weaving together photographs. In that workshop, it’s about weaving together a photograph to make a bigger photograph that everyone builds together, and that’s quite sweet.

I also think the production vibe has been really awesome. We’ve brought on Nico, who is our production designer, and she’s putting a lot of work into making the market look really beautiful and creating some lamps and all of this stuff that we’ve all organised working bees around.

A lot of the things that you’ll see around, and what Fed Square will be adorned in, has been handmade by a lot of hands and community effort.

And oh, one thing to look out for is definitely the screens. We’re working with an AV team in Indonesia who’ve created some really fun visuals to be looked at on the screen.

How should people experience pasar senja? What time should they come? Who should they bring?

Honestly, the best part of these events is that you can come at any time and that there is always something that’s going to be awesome on stage and something to eat and something to look at and shop for.

I reckon, hopefully, touch wood if the weather’s amazing, the sunset will be really nice.

It’s Valentine’s Day, so bring your boos, your baes, your pookies.

It’s family-friendly, so there’s definitely something for everyone. I think all the music programming hits every audience. During the day, bring the kids, get them along to the weaving workshop, have a little bite or whatever. It’s still summer, so the sun’s still not setting until 8.30, 9pm.

If you have an Indonesian friend and want to know a bit more about them and their background and a little bit about Indonesia in general and especially Indonesian life in Australia, come along.

The event is an invitation for people to participate. Don’t just spectate, join in, eat some stuff, have conversations, dance and do things. I think it’s really participatory in that way and that’s always done best with other people that you love.

And bring your grandma, bring your kids.

Bring your grandma. Grandma’s so invited. Bring your grandmas, bring your neighbour, bring your crush. That would be a great place to bring a crush. People have fallen in love at Nongkrong before and it will happen again, I hope.

What have been some of the challenges is creating and running Nongkrong festival?

There’s been a massive learning curve – especially jumping from a 500-person festival to a 5,000-person festival last year at Fed Square.

The big learning curve last year was that we did nine events in two weeks and just flew too close to the sun and really burnt ourselves out. And this year, the challenge has been putting all of those learnings from last year in place and learning to take care and rest and to get ourselves in a good space so we can actually enjoy our event as opposed to trying to throw a 5,000-person event on the tail end of eight other events.

There are so many moving parts and it’s very hard to communicate what this event actually is because there’s music on one hand, but then there’s food and there’s a design market and there’s workshops. It’s a very overstimulating environment that we’ve created, which is part of the joy of it.

And so it’s really just one of those things where you’ve got to be there – it’s a ‘you’ll-see-when-you-get-there’ kind of thing.

Nongkrong – Pasar Senja (twilight fair) will be held at Fed Square as part of Open Air at the Square, on Saturday 14 December from 3pm until 10pm. The event is presented by Fed Square and Nongkrong and supported by Garuda Indonesia.