The main purpose of the Media and Heritage Workshops and Activities is to provide a space for and to facilitate exchanges between practitioners and grassroots communities from Ternate, North Maluku, and Surabaya. In the age of digital media, images have played a pertinent role in mediating everyday social relations and sustaining collective memories. They have the capacity to address/redress marginalized histories, contest official narratives, and envision narratives to imagine a more sustainable future. Seen this way, images and image-making practices are potent sites of creativity and political engagement. In this series of workshops and activities, we would like to centre the work of heritage, arts, and environment-related practitioners to experiment with their medium in situ and to discuss what issues and concerns, through their practices, emerged and the challenges they face. The experiences from two Indonesian urban centres, one in Java and the other one in Ternate, North Maluku, offer unique perspectives on concerns of using visual media practices that articulate contemporary issues surrounding urban and heritage activism, alongside environmental struggles.
This programme is a part of the SNF-funded research project: Images, (In)visibilities, and Work on Appearances (IMAGEAPP). Please consult our Instagram (@imageapproject) where we use the platform to document, exhibit, and interact with the work of our interlocutors, including those from this programme.
Activity description: This session is a guided sketch walk by Urban Sketchers Surabaya (USK), a community of sketch enthusiasts that regularly gathers around the city's landmark and/or heritage sites. This tour will be joined by Ternate-based artist Fadriah Syuaib who also regularly organizes sketchwalk in her own city, particularly for young participants and beginners in getting acquainted with visual arts at an early age. The session is aimed at sketch enthusiasts, artists, and scholars who are using sketching as a part of their method. The tour will be followed by an informal discussion amongst the participants regarding the work they produced during the course of this walking tour. Results and impressions of this workshop will be put up in our project's Instagram handle: (@imageapproject)
Walking Tour Route: Starting from De Javasche Bank Museum, we will walk to a colonial infrastructure tied to the plantation economy with many colonial-era buildings in the surrounding area. We end at the Pabean Market, less than 500m from the starting point crossing over the bridge above the Kalimas river. The market sells many commodities that can be traced back to colonial times, including spices.
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