Arus Balik – Shifting Currents Symposium: Day 1Arus Balik – Shifting Currents Symposium: Day 1

Understanding contemporary architecture and design practices that navigate histories of inequality and violence requires careful reflection, dialogue and action. How can we find the vocabulary, tools and artistic languages to acknowledge these pasts, while expressing the futures we wish to share? The symposium, organised in the light of the wider Arus Balik - Shifting Currents programme, invites architects, artists, designers, collectives, historians and design researchers to contribute insights, blueprints, vocabularies and tools that might bring us closer to reassessing the futures at stake through an intersection of pasts and lived realities.

In four sessions, spread out over two days, invited panellists will offer their moments of shifting paradigms and currents. At the heart of this symposium is a non-hierarchical and multivocal approach to knowledge, analysing the possibilities of design experimentation when nourished by situated, local perspectives and innovative archival research.

• 09:00 Walk-in
• 09:30 Welcome by Museum Het Schip and look back to An Evening With: ruangrupa
• 09:45 – 12:00 Session 1: New Design Vocabularies / The Past in the Present
• 12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
• 13:00 – 15:00 Session 2: Diasporic Imaginaries
• 15:00 – 15:30 Closing remarks by Gudskul
• 15:30 – 22:00 GUD Instituut Living Room
• 15:30 – 22:00 Screening Making of a Ruin by Suni Satoinongur
• 16:00 – 18:30 Workshop How The Book Could Read Us? with Gatari & Benny (RSVP here)
• 18:30 – 22:00 Food and music

• Chair: Sadiah Boonstra
• Speakers: Berlage di Nusantara (Angeline Basuki, Ester van Steekelenburg and Petra Timmer), Hermawan Dasmanto and others

Architecture and Design are not shaped and created in isolation; rather, they are the result of complex dialectical societal, cultural, economic, and political dynamics. During the colonial period, Dutch architects such as Michel de Klerk, Henri Maclaine Pont, and Thomas Karsten operated in a European architectural framework that selectively build on and used local Indonesian architectural practices and motives from a Eurocentric perspective. Conversely, Indonesian architects like Soejoedi Wirjoatmodjo, Friedrich Silaban, and Liem Bwan Tjie used European concepts and practices, which subsequently influenced the development of Indonesian architecture and design. In the wake of decolonization movements across the world, architecture and design from the colonial period are also in need of reassessment. How can the dialectical relationships of architectural designs from the colonial period be interpreted today? What narratives, knowledges, and people have historically been overlooked that could provide new insights into colonial legacies of architecture? To what extent is it possible to appreciate the outcomes of cultural exchange within a colonial context while maintaining a critical and transparent stance on the power dynamics that shaped these designs? How do contemporary architects and designers engage with these historical legacies in their own practices? Furthermore, what does the future hold for these legacies?

• Chair: Made Ngurah Amanda Pinatih 
• Speakers: Nazif Lopulissa, Christopher Reinhart and Setiadi Sopandi

Transnational global processes such as colonisation, trade and other often exploitative economic relationships have given rise to widespread diasporas. The networks formed through education, travel, and various forms of diasporisation have played a crucial role in shaping diasporic vernaculars, which have become increasingly important in the 21st century. Architectural and design communities scattered across the globe are linked by shared diasporic experiences. These experiences have created fragmented temporalities of artistic relationships that navigate the intersections of the past, present, and future. Both designers and architects reflect on their ‘in-between status’, bringing to light forgotten histories of resistance, connection and solidarity that are enacted across different worlds. This session explores how the diasporic imaginary is shaped and influenced by different temporalities, localities, traditions, identities, and subjectivities, and how these elements contribute to the formation of collective memories and projections of the future. Furthermore, how do diasporic individuals navigate and re-imagine their positions through architecture and design, using objects, documents, knowledge systems and ideas gathered from their geographically dispersed locations?

From this September, Nieuwe Instituut, Museum Het Schip and Gudskul present the Arus Balik – Shifting Currents programme. Supported by DutchCulture, the Prince Claus Fund, the Marinus Plantema Foundation, Museum Arsitektur Indonesia, Berlage di Nusantara and others, this initiative aims to bring together architecture and design networks that link the regions and their diasporas, recognising architecture and design as material witnesses to colonial histories and pathways to possible shared presents. How can we rearticulate design legacies between Indonesia and the Netherlands and investigate future pathways?