Rumah Dan Halaman (House and courtyard)

The Design of Installation about the collective community organic space based on compromisation and collaboration activities
(2016)

___________________________________________

The Collaboration Projects “Media Conscious” in Asia: Lifepatch ‘Rumah and Halaman’ is activities and installation exhibition at the end 2016 until early 2017 organized by Japan Foundation Asia Center and NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] and held at ICC Gallery B5, Tokyo Opera City Tower, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo. Within this project, The ideas of the installation and exhibition design were to talk about The Lifepatch and all its works as a collective that formed in 2012 in Yogyakarta – Indonesia. The things that closely related to all my experiences as a member of The Lifepatch.

icc-panorama-v-02b — The Exhibition Installation of Collaboration Project ‘‘Media Conscious in Asia”: Lifepatch ‘Rumah dan Halaman’

The Lifepatch is a collective community-based that has members with diverse interests and educational backgrounds, such as scientists, programmers, designers, artists, and curators. Since formed in Yogyakarta in 2012, they established a small house as their main place for works, conducts collaborative activities, and develops socially engaged projects related to art, science, and technology based on Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and Do-It-With-Others (DIWO) ethos. The place itself became an important space as a hub for individuals and communities to interact cooperatively through mutual learning, discussion, and meeting.

“Rumah” is an Indonesian word for the house. However, most people in Indonesia include Lifepatch, and many collective communities or organizations who use House as their main space aren’t describing the house as just a type of permanent physical structure with a particular function as a shelter or a Residential Building. There are several attributes that defining it as a “home”, such as self-consciousness, sense of belonging, histories, and a place where the dwellers practicing various ideas of better living concepts through simple hacking as an effort to survive.

When examining thoroughly to presents the works and all activities of Lifepatch, there seems to be a tendency to put The Rumah as The main space to work and interact cooperatively with individuals and communities. As a space of collective community-based, Rumah of Lifepatch also represents its dweller’s strategy as a collective when practicing their methods of dwelling in a place where private and public as place values and function can be connected or separated. The first part that also being called “Rumah” is the main area with private value and protected by a particular structure of a building. Basically, Rumah is the representative of its dweller’s internal affairs, which is an organic space that always growing and slightly changing based on the dweller’s effort to organize, compromise, and collaborate with each other to meet all their basic needs, interests, and activities. The second part called the “Halaman” or the courtyard. This part is a transition space provided by the Rumah dwellers to make both of connector and barriers between the concept of private and public. As a connector, the Halaman Rumah is a place for the dweller to meet every external aspect of the Rumah. Contrary, Halaman also became barriers that provide by the Rumah dwellers to protect their private area and all of its internal aspect.

However, talking about The Rumah of Lifepatch as a space for collective community-based, there seems to be a tendency that the Rumah is not just a mere physical structure with a particular function, but as an organic space that lives and slightly changing when projecting the dweller lives and activities. Meanwhile, as a form of a dialogue, it provides a creative environment within its spaces for its dweller to conduct creative activities through the works and interaction between the collective member and other community.

The Rumah Dan Halaman (House and courtyard) installation were designed based on those concepts as the reimagination of Lifepatch space with all of its activities and brought it all into an art gallery space as part of The Collaboration Projects “Media Conscious” in Asia between Lifepatch, Japan Foundation Asia Center and NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC].