After spending the entire month of October not visiting a single exhibition—for whatever reason—Agung and I finally dusted off our rusty exhibition muscles and went to visit Kemang 12730 again. You may remember that we visited this annual exhibition for the first time last year. Personally, I have never visited an exhibition series two years in a row before—except perhaps anything by Sejauh Mata Memandang, but I guess that’s a little different. If last year’s theme was “public,” this year focuses on “fragmenting yesterday, reshaping tomorrow,” which turns out to be more my cup of tea.
After spending the entire month of October not visiting a single exhibition—for whatever reason—Agung and I finally dusted off our rusty exhibition muscles and went to visit Kemang 12730 again. You may remember that we visited this annual exhibition for the first time last year. Personally, I have never visited an exhibition series two years in a row before—except perhaps anything by Sejauh Mata Memandang, but I guess that’s a little different. If last year’s theme was “public,” this year focuses on “fragmenting yesterday, reshaping tomorrow,” which turns out to be more my cup of tea.
Perpetuating Change
As I mentioned last year, Kemang 12730 is an annual art & design event held by ICAD that constitutes a string of events spanning the entire Kemang area in South Jakarta. This year the event collaborates with 59 participants, spanning from restaurants, design, film and architecture studios, to record stores, hotels and even supermarkets.
While not all participants are required to prepare a sub-event at their own space, a lot of them are coming up with exciting limited-edition offers during the event. Lemondiscofish, for instance, comes up with an event-special menu—which I’m frankly dying to try. The same goes for Pasta, Bitte!
Obviously, the main event is the exhibition held at Grandkemang Hotel—which is what we decided to visit. This year the exhibition consists of five categories: Special Appearance, In Focus, Featured, Open Submission, dan Collaboration.
What captures my eyes the most is the ‘collaboration’ section. The one that they kept from last year is the ASPaC showcase by design students from across Indonesia. We didn’t catch this last year, due to some very confusing wayfinding—which persists, unfortunately—but this year’s works are pretty interesting. Some of them are submitted by my juniors at uni—I’m oddly proud.
As I mentioned last year, Kemang 12730 is an annual art & design event held by ICAD that constitutes a string of events spanning the entire Kemang area in South Jakarta. This year the event collaborates with 59 participants, spanning from restaurants, design, film and architecture studios, to record stores, hotels and even supermarkets.
While not all participants are required to prepare a sub-event at their own space, a lot of them are coming up with exciting limited-edition offers during the event. Lemondiscofish, for instance, comes up with an event-special menu—which I’m frankly dying to try. The same goes for Pasta, Bitte!
Obviously, the main event is the exhibition held at Grandkemang Hotel—which is what we decided to visit. This year the exhibition consists of five categories: Special Appearance, In Focus, Featured, Open Submission, dan Collaboration.
What captures my eyes the most is the ‘collaboration’ section. The one that they kept from last year is the ASPaC showcase by design students from across Indonesia. We didn’t catch this last year, due to some very confusing wayfinding—which persists, unfortunately—but this year’s works are pretty interesting. Some of them are submitted by my juniors at uni—I’m oddly proud.
My personal favourite actually comes in three collaborations. The first one is the Altermatter project, an incredible collaboration between Arts British Council Indonesia, Applied Arts Scotland, PLAYO and CAST Foundation. This project has brought together material designers and product designers from Indonesia and the UK to experiment to come up with sustainable, alternative materials for the future of manufacture. They have played around with waste—such as bamboo dust, seashells and cigarette butts—as well as out-of-the-box materials—such as mycelium fungi and Mucuna plant—to create a structure that is durable and easily applicable to various items and structures.
The second one is Building with Nature, a collaboration between PLAYO, Company New Heroes and Erasmus Huis Jakarta. This collaboration connects Dutch and Indonesian designers and material makers to truly hone the bio-potential of Indonesia to come up with sustainable materials for a healthier planet. There a total of 20 participating artists when the project first made its appearance at Erasmus Huis earlier this year, but I don’t think all of their work made it to this one. Some of the names that I found familiar include Bell Society, Mycotech Lab, Plepah and Studio Dapur.
Last but not least, is called RONGGA: Welcome to Human’s First Home, a collaboration between (again) PLAYO and ICAD itself. This project creates this IKEA-like model of a bedroom and transforms it into a room dripping with potential. In it, you will be able to find numerous homeware items made out of materials you wouldn’t even have thought of before. It’s so cozy, beautiful and I really wish I could buy something.
It’s so cool to see how these people from different backgrounds work together to come up with unique solutions that could potentially change the face of manufacturing. The future of product could well be forever altered.
Thrifted shirt + skirt // Hand-me-down t-shirt // Roti Eneng tote bag // old socks // gifted sneakers // photos of me by Agung
My personal favourite actually comes in three collaborations. The first one is the Altermatter project, an incredible collaboration between Arts British Council Indonesia, Applied Arts Scotland, PLAYO and CAST Foundation. This project has brought together material designers and product designers from Indonesia and the UK to experiment to come up with sustainable, alternative materials for the future of manufacture. They have played around with waste—such as bamboo dust, seashells and cigarette butts—as well as out-of-the-box materials—such as mycelium fungi and Mucuna plant—to create a structure that is durable and easily applicable to various items and structures.
The second one is Building with Nature, a collaboration between PLAYO, Company New Heroes and Erasmus Huis Jakarta. This collaboration connects Dutch and Indonesian designers and material makers to truly hone the bio-potential of Indonesia to come up with sustainable materials for a healthier planet. There a total of 20 participating artists when the project first made its appearance at Erasmus Huis earlier this year, but I don’t think all of their work made it to this one. Some of the names that I found familiar include Bell Society, Mycotech Lab, Plepah and Studio Dapur.
Last but not least, is called RONGGA: Welcome to Human’s First Home, a collaboration between (again) PLAYO and ICAD itself. This project creates this IKEA-like model of a bedroom and transforms it into a room dripping with potential. In it, you will be able to find numerous homeware items made out of materials you wouldn’t even have thought of before. It’s so cozy, beautiful and I really wish I could buy something.
It’s so cool to see how these people from different backgrounds work together to come up with unique solutions that could potentially change the face of manufacturing. The future of product could well be forever altered.
Thrifted shirt + skirt // Hand-me-down t-shirt // Roti Eneng tote bag // old socks // gifted sneakers // photos of me by Agung
Think Outside the Box
One of the works that mesmerised us instantly was Tactogram, this awesome wayfinding system for the blind that utilises different geometrical shapes to guide the user to different places, depending on what they may be looking for. Agung and I were both intrigued and we wanted to try to see if it truly worked. They provided us with a blindfold and walking cane for this very purpose, so we indulged. I mean, we weren’t blind so our senses probably as heightened, but we couldn’t seem to figure out the different shapes with our eyes closed. However, I did manage to steer myself to a certain direction, though.
As far as interactive works go, our favourite would have to be Terkoneksi Terisolasi Terisolasi Terkoneksi by Arafura. It is basically a room with projection being shot into three of the four walls. The projection consists of numerous faces of people in a particular doodle style and random ornaments on top of them. You can even draw your own version—be it your actual face or completely made up.
Other than that, I also love some of the solo exhibitors. Still sticking with groundbreaking, experimental and sustainable materials, my favourite would have to be Adhi Nugraha‘s work, “Cow Dung Wasteland’s Transformation.” He created a series of homeware items, such as table lamps, bluetooth speaker, chairs and coffee tables, utilising cow dung as the base material. The beautiful thing about his work is that, not only none of it smells disgusting—if you smell it, it just smells like wet grass—but they all have such unique shapes and cute designs. I’m seriously eyeing on of the speakers and wish I could buy one.
We also got to be reunited with Heri Dono, whose work we saw earlier at the Kelana Boneka exhibition. We instantly liked his works then—it was so eccentric and provocative, you know—so when we saw his work here, titled “Genetic Manipulation,” we were drawn to it without even knowing it was his. When we found out it was him, we were so excited—it all made sense.
Other than that, I also love some of the solo exhibitors. Still sticking with groundbreaking, experimental and sustainable materials, my favourite would have to be Adhi Nugraha‘s work, “Cow Dung Wasteland’s Transformation.” He created a series of homeware items, such as table lamps, bluetooth speaker, chairs and coffee tables, utilising cow dung as the base material. The beautiful thing about his work is that, not only none of it smells disgusting—if you smell it, it just smells like wet grass—but they all have such unique shapes and cute designs. I’m seriously eyeing on of the speakers and wish I could buy one.
We also got to be reunited with Heri Dono, whose work we saw earlier at the Kelana Boneka exhibition. We instantly liked his works then—it was so eccentric and provocative, you know—so when we saw his work here, titled “Genetic Manipulation,” we were drawn to it without even knowing it was his. When we found out it was him, we were so excited—it all made sense.
One of the works that mesmerised us instantly was Tactogram, this awesome wayfinding system for the blind that utilises different geometrical shapes to guide the user to different places, depending on what they may be looking for. Agung and I were both intrigued and we wanted to try to see if it truly worked. They provided us with a blindfold and walking cane for this very purpose, so we indulged. I mean, we weren’t blind so our senses probably as heightened, but we couldn’t seem to figure out the different shapes with our eyes closed. However, I did manage to steer myself to a certain direction, though.
As far as interactive works go, our favourite would have to be Terkoneksi Terisolasi Terisolasi Terkoneksi by Arafura. It is basically a room with projection being shot into three of the four walls. The projection consists of numerous faces of people in a particular doodle style and random ornaments on top of them. You can even draw your own version—be it your actual face or completely made up.
Unlike last year, the exhibition feels a little more spacious this year—I think due to the smaller number of visitors. At first, I thought it was because the theme didn’t interest people—although that would be absolutely absurd—but now I realise it’s probably because of the hour-based registration system. Last year we could register to come at an appointed date, but the time wasn’t specified. This year there were time slots that we had to pick before we could enter the exhibition premises. I think that helped curate the people who would visit, as well as make the place feel a whole lot roomier than previously. It probably aimed for an exclusive, niche feel, but since we saw the crowd before, it only felt a little empty.
That being said, I realised just now that there surely were a lot less people who came there just to use the works as backdrop. Most of the people who came to visit with us seemed genuinely interested in the works being displayed. Oh sure, there were still a select few who seemed more interested in doing it for the ‘gram, but they were far and few between—as I recall. I just realised that that’s why the experience felt a whole lot more pleasant. It could also be due to the chairs, now being strewn all over the place in the area—before, there were no chairs, so we had to stand until we got out.
All in all, it was a pretty fun experience. I absolutely love seeing all the amazing artworks—especially the experimental materials ones. I’d love to read more about those works and perhaps even write about the amazing projects that they are doing. Well, if I do, you’ll surely find them on this blog soon. Just watch this space!
Do stop by Kemang 12730, if you have the chance.
It will still be open to visit until 27 November 2022.
Unlike last year, the exhibition feels a little more spacious this year—I think due to the smaller number of visitors. At first, I thought it was because the theme didn’t interest people—although that would be absolutely absurd—but now I realise it’s probably because of the hour-based registration system. Last year we could register to come at an appointed date, but the time wasn’t specified. This year there were time slots that we had to pick before we could enter the exhibition premises. I think that helped curate the people who would visit, as well as make the place feel a whole lot roomier than previously. It probably aimed for an exclusive, niche feel, but since we saw the crowd before, it only felt a little empty.
That being said, I realised just now that there surely were a lot less people who came there just to use the works as backdrop. Most of the people who came to visit with us seemed genuinely interested in the works being displayed. Oh sure, there were still a select few who seemed more interested in doing it for the ‘gram, but they were far and few between—as I recall. I just realised that that’s why the experience felt a whole lot more pleasant. It could also be due to the chairs, now being strewn all over the place in the area—before, there were no chairs, so we had to stand until we got out.
All in all, it was a pretty fun experience. I absolutely love seeing all the amazing artworks—especially the experimental materials ones. I’d love to read more about those works and perhaps even write about the amazing projects that they are doing. Well, if I do, you’ll surely find them on this blog soon. Just watch this space!
Do stop by Kemang 12730, if you have the chance.
It will still be open to visit until 27 November 2022.