Mitha Budhyarto

This paper suggests that as higher education systems in Southeast Asia begins to embrace the “interdisciplinary turn”, there is an urgent need to critically analyse the relation between interdisciplinarity and academic institutions. Arguing that the situation is problematised as the region struggles to compete within the increasingly globalised knowledge economy, this paper then explains how the self-organising structures of artist-collectives from the region provide models for expanding the creative potentials of an educational institution.

Bagaimana sebuah “tempat” terbentuk bukanlah suatu permasalahan desain saja, tapi juga merupakan suatu permasalahan filosofis, seperti yang telah dicontohkan oleh luasnya cakupan kajian tentang topik ini (Heidegger, 2008; Bachelard, 1994; Tuan, 1977; Casey, 1997; dst.) Meski argumen yang diberikan bervariasi, sebuah gagasan  yang disetujui mengatakan bahwa “placemaking” harus dimengerti sebagai sebuah tindakan interaktif, yang terjalin dari berbagai hubungan kompleks antara seseorang (si subjek) dan suatu tempat.

Permasalahan tentang “placemaking” ini menjadi semakin mendesak ketika kita pertimbangkan dampak-dampak dari “krisis ekologi”. Dalam essay ini, penulis berargumentasi bahwa desain yang bertanggung-jawab secara etis hanya dapat diciptakan bila pemahaman yang kuat akan hubungan antara kita dan alam telah ditetapkan. Argumen ini dibangun melalui dua tahap. Pertama, penulis akan menganalisa dua asumsi mengenai “eco-criticism”: di satu sisi, adanya kecenderungan untuk meng-objektifikasi alam, dimana alam dilihat sebagai suatu objek yang ada “diluar sana”, ke arah mana kita proyeksikan norma-norma; dan disisi lain, adanya  perspektif “deep ecology” yang menanggap bahwa hubungan antara kita dan alam pada dasarnya memiliki suatu “kekerabatan” (kinship) tersendiri, yang pada akhirnya menciutkan hubungan tersebut menjadi suatu keharmonisan yang sifatnya formulais. Keduanya, menurut argumentasi penulis, hanya memberikan gambaran yang “setengah-jadi” mengenai hubungan antara manusia dan alam.

Disini, penulis akan membahas apa yang diabaikan oleh kedua perspektif ini, yakni suatu “jarak” fundamental yang mencirikan hubungan antara manusia dan alam. Dengan merujuk pada filsafat fenomenologis Maurice Merleau-Ponty, penulis menawarkan bahwa pemaknaan akan alam yang mengakomodir ide tentang “jarak” ini, akan membawa kita kepada solusi-solusi alternatif untuk menciptakan desain yang dapat dipertanggung jawabkan secara etis.

Kata kunci:  Ecocriticism, etika lingkungan hidup, placemaking, fenomenologi.

A ‘nonplace’, in Marc Augé’s view, may be defined in contrast to what he refers to as anthropological place’. It is spaced that cannot be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity. This article explores the sense of (non)place by answering these questions: if it is true that ‘who’ we are is defined by ‘where’ we are, insinuating that places do have an important role in shaping our identities, then what do these nonplaces tell us about us? In places that lack any defining features and reflect little of the unique local geography in which they are in, can we still develop a sense of place? What is needed now is a shift from the initial prioritizing of ‘cultural contexts’, to the ‘context of the ‘embodied’, emplaced, individual subject, a context that precedes any cognitive framework. Bearing in mind this shift in focus to the body, a phenomenological analysis of nonplaces then becomes necessary. The experiential value of a place must be assessed according to a lived, embodied engagement with it. Rem Koolhas’ view of a ‘generic city’ in which urban dwellers now live has worldwide reverberations. This paper argues that a phenomenological analysis that emphasizes on subjective, embodied, lived experience is a necessary step to make. By focusing on the body, the strict categorisations that have led to negative connotations to nonplaces begin to lose their rigidity.

Keywords: Nonplace, space, identity, urban environment, a sense of place, embodiment, generic city

"This paper will discuss Deleuze’s notion of “assemblage” in the context of Indonesian contemporary art practice, in particular works by Ardi Gunawan. Although this area has recently been subject to substantial academic study (Turner, 2008; Mashadi, 2006), none have approached it from a Deleuzian perspective. This is related to the tendency of much of art history and theory of the last three decades, which are characterized by the “linguistic turn” stimulated primarily by Derrida (1976, 1978) and de Man (1979, 1983). In a nutshell, this perspective holds that all phenomena, including art practices – its production and discourse – must be read and interpreted as a text. As an outcome, it overlooks that we experience the world not as texts to be deciphered and conceptualized through the acts of reading and writing, but first and foremost as corporeal, tangible phenomena that we register through and with the “psycho-physical” aspects of the body (Casey, 1997).

Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty offer a way to think beyond textuality by turning instead to the embodied engagement we have with events and objects in the world. Both, I argue, shift the theoretical focus from “experience-as-text” by calling attention to the “textures” of embodied experience. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body is especially instructive in its argument that embodied perception remains a unique source of meaning (2003). Deleuze takes Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical project of the body further by focusing on the notions of movements and flows, of “material and forces” that produce “assemblages” (1995, 2004).

The aesthetic model provided by Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty is particularly relevant in a discussion about contemporary art practices that negotiate the limits of sculpture and performance. Here, I will discuss the work of a contemporary Indonesian artist, Ardi Gunawan, in order to illustrate my claim. Contemporary art in Indonesia is a thriving area of study and in this paper I aim to add to existing research by discussing the experience of Gunawan’s works in terms of spatio-temporal “assemblages”.
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