Workshop Resituating Colonial Archives / Simpang Susun Arsip Kolonial Workshop Resituating Colonial Archives / Simpang Susun Arsip Kolonial

The National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, which Het Nieuwe Instituut manages, contains photographs, drawings, maps, letters and other documents relating to Dutch (ex-colonial) architecture legacies and cultures, including built environments in Indonesia. These archival records are well looked after, preserved as they are in the institute's storage facility, but their location in Rotterdam limits their physical accessibility - especially for Indonesian communities.

It is therefore important to widen forms of availability, question the circulation of materials, and underscore digital solidarity. Taking the geographical constraint as a critical issue, this cross-institutional, international workshop seeks to provide (digital) resources, tools and networks to young researchers, as well as to architects' and artists' collectives from Indonesia, so that they can access and activate the documents.

Invited participants, selected by Gudskul and arsitekturindonesia.org, are joined by practitioners from Indonesia and the Netherlands to exchange knowledge about the multifaceted ways of researching and resituating colonial archives. Culminating in a public presentation and exhibition, the workshop interweaves practices and perspectives to address the question of archival accessibility, while testing the boundaries of our connected colonial past, and opening up avenues for sustained collaboration between these networks and Het Nieuwe Instituut.

The archives of Albert Frederik Aalbers, Liem Bwan Tjie, Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Johannes Martinus Groenewegen, Henri Maclaine Pont, Adolf Eibink, and Johannes Theodorus van Oyen have been preselected as case studies. The documents, digitised and made available to the participants during the workshop, cover numerous buildings and landscapes in Jakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, Bali, Medan and other locations in Indonesia. These case studies are meant to serve as a starting point, but the participants are encouraged to further explore the National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning.

Session I Part 1: Navigating the Collection (Invite only) Introduction to the archive and navigation through the collection online. Speaker: Clara Stille-Haardt (archivist/conservator, Het Nieuwe Instituut)

Session I Part 2: Navigating the Collection (Open to the public) What is the National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, and why does it contain so many documents concerning built environments in Indonesia? How can we access these documents, and to what extent can we use them? In this session, archivists from Het Nieuwe Instituut and the working group members of Collecting Otherwise discuss the archives held by the Instituut and the initiatives taken to make the collection more visible, inclusive and accessible.

Session II: Researching Colonial Indonesia (Invite only) What are the possibilities when researching colonial Indonesia? What stories can documents about built environments tell us? How can historical archives speak for current contexts? Discussing methods and subjects that can contribute to our engagement with historical archives, this session explores various approaches towards researching the past.

Session III: Forms of Archives (Invite only) How can artistic practices build on archival materials? In what ways can historical records be utilised beyond the academic framework? What kinds of ideas and interactions can we activate through archives? This session investigates the different forms of archives - the spaces they can inhabit and the lives they can live outside the storage boxes and folders.

Session IV: Public Presentations (Open to the public) The final session of the workshop provides a space for the participants to test and circulate their work in the form of public presentations. Two external respondents are invited to provide their views on the presented works.