Frame Contemporary Art Finland hosts an online hanging out lunch session with the Indonesian artist collective ruangrupa on Thursday 28 January 2021 from 12 noon to 2 pm on Zoom. The event is open for everyone to participate.
Ruangrupa, currently curating contemporary art exhibition documenta fifteen, is a Jakarta-based collective established in 2000. It is a non-profit organisation that strives to support the idea of art within an urban and cultural context by involving artists and other disciplines, such as the social sciences, politics, technology and media to offer critical observations and views on Indonesian contemporary urban issues.
Online lunch session is organised in the context of Frame’s international expert visitor programme. Ruangrupa has been invited to meet artists organisations and initiatives in the Finnish art scene to understand the context and art ecosystem contained in Finland and to gather new friends along the journey made possible by documenta fifteen.
At the lunch session, Frederikke Hansen, Daniella Praptono and Farid Rakun (with the possibility of others also joining), from ruangrupa’s documenta fifteen team will introduce their curatorial approach for the 2022 event and reflect the research meetings which they have had with Finnish artist initiatives and organisations.
Ruangrupa’s central curatorial approach for documenta fifteen is based on the principles of collectivity, resource building, and equal sharing. They aim to appeal not just to an art audience but to a variety of communities, and to promote local commitment and participation. Their approach is based on an international network of local, community-based organisations from the art and other cultural contexts and can be outlined by the Indonesian term lumbung.
Hanging out with ruangrupa
online lunch session
Thursday 28 January, 12 noon–2 pm (EET) on Zoom
About ruangrupa
The Indonesian word “ruangrupa” loosely translates as “a space for art” or “a space form.” Ruangrupa also produces collaborative works in the form of art projects such as exhibitions, festivals, art labs, workshops, research projects, as well as books, magazines, and online-journal publications. ruangrupa’s work is an all-encompassing social, spatial, and personal practice, strongly linked to Indonesian culture in which friendship, solidarity, and community are central values.
Ruangrupa runs an art space in South Jakarta. The collective has participated in many cooperative projects and exhibitions, including the Gwangju Biennale (2002 and 2018), the Istanbul Biennial (2005), the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Brisbane, 2012), the Singapore Biennale (2011), the São Paulo Biennial (2014), the Aichi Triennale (Nagoya, 2016), and Cosmopolis at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2017). In 2016, ruangrupa curated transACTION: Sonsbeek 2016 in Arnhem, the Netherlands.
Lumbung, directly translatable as “rice barn” is a collective pot or accumulation system used in rural areas of Indonesia, where crops produced by a community are stored as a future shared common resource and distributed according to jointly determined criteria. According to ruangrupa, using lumbung as a model, documenta fifteen is a collective resource pot, operating under the logics of the commons.
Read more about documenta fifteen
We follow safe space guidelines in all of our events. The meeting is free from discrimination such as racism, sexism and ableism. Please make everyone feel safe to participate and do not make assumptions about each other based on gender, health, abilities or other stereotypes. You can always give feedback and tell about discriminatory or other interference to representative of Frame in the meetings or after the meeting by email The contact person for this event is Jussi Koitela: jussi.koitela@frame-finland.fi / +358 (0)50 471 7711.
ruangrupa in 2019. Photo by Jin Panji /Gudskul.