The launch of the zine “Kult!” at IFI Yogyakarta is part of the 2025 Community Service Program (Pengabdian Kepada Masyarakat/PKM) organized by the Media and Cultural Studies (Kajian Budaya dan Media/KBM) Study Program. The zine features fourteen works by Master’s students of the 2024 KBM cohort. Held on Friday (July 4th), the event featured Dr. Andreas Budi Widyanta, S.Sos., M.A. as the guest speaker.
Andreas Budi Widyanta noted that the 2024 KBM zine combines artistic and expressive forms. “The narratives are incredibly diverse, yet surprisingly share expressionist elements that invite us to reflect on our lives through multiple dimensions,” said the man affectionately known as Mas AB.
The 2024 KBM students come from varied academic backgrounds—literature, arts, communication, philosophy, film studies, psychology, and more. Brought together under the same roof of Media and Cultural Studies, they engaged in rich interdisciplinary dialogues. These diverse individual expressions were woven together to create a shared meaning, manifested in the form of the zine. This, according to Mas AB, is a celebration of diversity.
Further, the lecturer in both Media and Cultural Studies and Sociology at Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) emphasized that celebrating diversity reflects the idea that there is no singular color to life—no single color that is standardized as norm or rule. Instead, life comprises multiple, intertwined, and complex colors.
“Even so, there’s a unifying tone in how these students voice their expressions—one that touches on humanity, justice, and things we often overlook,” he said when interviewed at IFI Yogyakarta. “It reminds us that there are matters worth examining—narratives that are scattered throughout our daily lives.”
For Mas AB, KBM students are able to express their individuality, yet are grounded in shared foundations in their effort to nurture restlessness. “We all carry a sense of unease—and that’s something worth celebrating over and over again. We cannot live in constant normality. There are solitary aspects that might leave us with fundamental questions about life itself. I believe the production of meaning these students present deserves to be celebrated in this year’s PKM,” he concluded.
Contributor: Zainul Arifin
SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequality)