Meditasi | Meditation

"Talk in Commons"
Sunday, 1 September 2013, 3.30 pm
KUNCI Cultural Studies Center
Jalan Langenarjan Lor 17B Yogyakarta

This year, KUNCI and Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam are working together in a collaborative project entitled "Made in Commons". The collaboration involves artists based in Indonesia and The Netherlands, resulting in a programme of exhibitions, performances and lectures in both Amsterdam (late 2013) and Yogyakarta (mid-2014). Broadly speaking, "Made in Commons" aims at exploring the productive aspects of commons in local cultural spheres, while investigating the historical and transnational relations that inform and shape commons-based practices in knowledge production, through several case studies.

Commons as an area of inquiry takes in a spectrum of sharing practices that are based on distribution of common resources, such as land and other natural resources, and collective actions in knowledge production. While as a discourse the dual aspects of the word have gained a renewed currency on the global stage due to the increasingly open digital knowledge circulation and attempts to find alternative models beyond capitalism, the task of translating commons into local political imaginations is not always an easy one. Despite the fact of its apparent features, in local contexts the notion of commons tends to tacitly weave through the fabrics of everyday landscape in the forms of oral-history, practice-based knowledges and products of communal creative activity.

The title "Made in Commons" is at the same time a reference to the working method applied by the organizers, and the forms as well as themes of collaboration in arts-making practices. The partnership between Indonesia and Dutch-based organization would add an extra twist considering the long colonial history between the Indonesia and the Netherlands. Our preliminary findings have shown that the colonial and postcolonial aspect of commons have take a pertinent role in shaping the discursive development in contemporary notions of resource ownership and distributions.

In "Talk in Commons", we invite you to join in the conversation which aims to punctuate any ideas, practice or in progress reflection within the development of this project. The talk will be carried out by Kerstin Winking (Global Collaborations Project Curator at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam), Syafiatudina, Vincent Vulsma (participating artist in Made in Commons project) and Nuraini Juliastuti.