Wednesday, July 29, 2020; 8pm
40 minute talk followed by 30 minutes of public debate broadcast live at thelab.org

Lumbung, directly translatable as “rice barn,” is a collective pot or accumulation system, where crops produced by a community are stored as a future shareable common resource

Lumbung: a collective resource pot operating under the logics of commons; an agglomeration of ideas, stories, (wo)manpower, time and other shareable resources. Metaphorically, this modest living room welcomes citizens to participate in building up resources from the ground, and thereby to own the space themselves. It should be able to become a new space, formed by the intersections of elements, yet without absorbing (and therefore eliminating) them. The created actions and spaces intertwine with social relations and transactions. It imagines the relations of an art institution with and within its surrounding community: namely, as an active constituent. Here strategies are developed based on proximity and common endeavour. Is this model scalable?

In 2018, learning from its experience of establishing Gudang Sarinah Ekosistem, ruangrupa co-initiated GUDSKUL: Contemporary Art Collective and Ecosystem Studies together with Serrum and Grafis Huru Hara. This public learning space has been set up to practise an expanded understanding of collective values, such as equality, sharing, solidarity, friendship and togetherness.

ruangrupa is a Jakarta-based collective established in 2000. It is a non-profit organisation that strives to support the idea of art within urban and cultural context by involving artists and other disciplines, such as social sciences, politics, technology and media, to give critical observation and views towards Indonesian urban contemporary issues. In 2018, together with Serrum and Grafis Huru Hara, ruangrupa co-initiated a public learning space, GUDSKUL. As an artists’ collective, ruangrupa has participated in the Gwangju Biennale (2002, 2018), Istanbul Biennale (2005), Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2012) and the Singapore Bienale (2011). ruangrupa was the curator of Sonsbeek ’16: TRANSaction and will also be curating the upcoming documenta fifteen.

The Forum is an experiment in creating discourse within the context of isolation. Art creates a space for reconsidering our knowledge across various social and professional fields. It asks us: Why do we perceive things the way we do? What are we living for? How can we reimagine our relationships to the human and non-human world? The Forum proposes that the project of freedom is a project of making a world with others. So, we invite you to help us answer: what can we do now?

Please bring your ideas, proposals, questions to discuss following the talk.

Photo by Jin Panji