Perumahan

Artjog2018: Enlightenment; Jogja National Museum 4 May – 4 June 2018

I lived in the same perumahan (housing estate) in Jogja for ten years. When it was built in 1986, all the houses were exactly the same. Since then, the residents have been busy renovating, and today all the houses are different.

The first perumahans were built in Indonesia in the 1940s. Colonial society was characterized by deep class divisions and limited social mobility, but the modern perumahan represented a utopian “middle class” where all the houses were standard and equal, so too, were the people who lived there… in theory.

Today, nobody in my perumahan wants to be equal or standard. Rather they want to be different, special and individual. It’s easy for us to talk about equality in theory, but not so easy to live in an equal world.

Production assistants:
Eki Abdan and Kepet
Thanks to Krack Studio