Common room for uncommon ideas
- Micha
- Apr 21, 2018
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 27, 2018
Common Room was one of the organisation on my list. The interview with Gustaff H. Iskandar, the Founder, brought me lots of important insights from the art and also a creative sphere in Bandung. The ecosystem of creative individuals and organisations are strongly connected and supportive. The success of several activities of Common Room includes multidisciplinary cooperation, open source platforms and supportive background for a dialogue in the variety of disciplines. Topics of the organisation reflect needs of Bandung society and also global issues connected with Indonesia like population demography, climate changes and food sovereignty.
ABOUT COMMON ROOM
First of all let me shortly introduce Common Room:
Common Room Networks Foundation (Common Room) is a non-profit platform established by Bandung Centre for New Media Arts. This platform facilitates dialogue and collaboration in the fields of art, culture and media organisation. Since the early stage of it’s development there are various activities like exhibitions, screening, workshops, lectures, discussions, small-scale music concerts, cultural festivals. It is a place where people can execute activities that focus on developing public knowledge and creativity in Bandung, Indonesia.
With Gustaff, we were talking about beginnings of the organisation and how it changed shape during the time. “Common room had started from an initiative by the group of people with different backgrounds and interests. It was a project from Bandung Centre For New Media Arts. We discussed that the new horizons are not only which exists in the digital world, but the most important thing is to find a way to combine online and offline surfaces. Then we developed Common Room as a physical space.”
BANDUNG CITY
In the beginning, I was wondering why Bandung is such a place for the strong creative community. As answers Gustaff gave me some useful hints about the background of the city. “What makes us different in Bandung is that the academic tradition is quite strong – Bandung is a new city, which means that we don’t have any historical or traditional burden. Here people are making new things as a part of the construction of identity. There is the spirit of innovation and creativity.”
PROJECTS
One of the inspirational movement was the mapping of creative communities. “Through some of our projects, we recognised that there are numbers of interest from the younger generation in creative practices. Not only in fine art but in music, design, fashion and so on. We wanted to identify actors, institutions and organisations so that we developed the project of Bandung Urban Cartography Project. It is like a creative mapping on Bandung. First it was a narrative map, where we shared interactive stories full of information. Starting from that action, we discussed more about the isolation of communities and the necessity to connect them. Then we tried to facilitate meetings and gatherings of different groups. Afterwards, we decided to organise Bandung Creative festival 2008 – Helarfest Bandung, where I was a programme director that time. It was the initial process of Bandung Creative City Forum development.” The first Helar Festival was being organized for about one month and there are involved different communities from Bandung to show their activities and participate in the programme of the festival.[1]
INSPIRING PRACTICES
Kasepuhan Ciptagelar village
Project lead by Innovation Factory Initiative on ICT with the collaboration of GIZ and Common Room aims to establish a mini data centre in the village in order to keep the information and the traditional knowledge of this place. The main focus is on sustainable agriculture development and on the connection of urban and rural knowledge. The mini data centre is a simple intranet where people in Kasepuhan Ciptagelar Village can share documents. Indigenous community of Kasepuhan Ciptagelar can preserve their collective knowledge in traditional agriculture and culture, and the mini data centre is accessible for public as a way to broaden the audience. This project represents a bridge between rural and urban communities and also a supportive net to develop strategies in agriculture. It is an example of beneficial collaboration between researchers and local people from Ciptagelar, who can sustain their knowledge and enrich the agricultural potential. This project is bringing technological innovation to small-scale farming.[2]
With Gustaff we were also talking about this project. I found it really interesting due to my interest in “simple life, full of knowledge” where agriculture plays a crucial role. From the interview: “When I started to work with indigenous people I started to learn this interesting way of thinking from their farming practice. Their farming practice is not only focused on what happens on the ground but also it is important to see what the sky tells you. They composed things simple into poetry. All the guidelines - which are the positions of stars during certain farming activity - they put into poetry. It is built up from only two lines, but once you understand it, it is very complex.“
CREATIVITY
The topic of our conversation was also creativity. I was asking generally about creativity in Indonesia and how people approach it. “Creativity in Indonesia is like a plant: if it finds the right soil, then it will grow. What I emphasise is to keep the right conditions and freedom and the appreciation of differences. Cultural expression in Indonesia is acknowledged as a shared entity. If you go to batik makers or craftsman, the certain patterns or ornaments are shared. These are open source tools that everyone can access, use, share, modify, develop, and then take the benefits. We need to make them open in order to make it alive.”
I never miss the question about creativity and what does it mean in the life of people whom I was talking to. Gustaff replied: “It’s a natural ability to deal with daily challenges. Something that is strongly in our DNA as a human. We have abilities to recognize problems, chance to do things differently, express new things and recognize changes in our surrounding. Ability to experience our higher being presence as a human, it's almost divine, touching the power of something bigger than life. In the end, as it is said, we are the children of stars. I believe, that creativity and innovation directly or indirectly have a connection with the source, with the energy. At the end, it is about the energy that forms our life.”
More information:
Facebook Common room: https://www.facebook.com/commonroom.id/
Gustaff blog: https://gstff.wordpress.com/about/
PDF report about prototyping data centre in Indonesia: http://icebauhaus.com/prototyping-new-forms-of-tech-innovation-for-small-scale-farming/#more-1070
Sources:
[2] http://www.innovation-factory.info/ict4agriculture/ict4agriculture-indonesia/
Image sources:
[2] https://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/arts/exchanges/global-collaborator-exchanges/indonesia#common-room-networks-foundation-bandung
[5] http://icebauhaus.com/prototyping-new-forms-of-tech-innovation-for-small-scale-farming/#more-1070
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