Framer Framed

15 Feb –
25 Feb 2024

Stories of Wounds and Wonder

We are thrilled to invite you to the display companion of Stories of Wounds and Wonder, an experimental children’s book by art researcher, writer, and pedagogue Nuraini Juliastuti. Stories of Wounds and Wonder is the result of a two-year research commission with the Amsterdam based arts organisation If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution as part of Edition IX–Bodies and Technologies.

Stories of Wounds and Wonder narrates cross-species practices of survival across the Indonesian archipelago, centring the perspectives of local animals such as endangered monkeys, cosmopolitan rats, migrant sparrows and fugitive dogs. Written in the form of a play, its six episodes ground the readers in the animals’ struggles and aspirations as they go about their daily lives and face the consequences of postcolonial erasure, ecological destruction and capitalist expansion. Intertwining different registers and modes of reading, the book combines dialogues, songs and drawings, with contextualising essays and an extensive notation. Guided by the adventurous she/rat Puteri, children and adults alike will learn about cross-species solidarity and rebellious movements, but also about disappearing Indigenous cosmologies, and the brave women who wove cloths around the mountains in eco-political resistance.

Imagined as a script for intergenerational transmission, the publication emerges from an inquiry into storytelling as a form of archival technology within the preservation and transmission practices of what Juliastuti calls the ‘commons museum’. Inspired by the work of Indigenous and rural activist communities based in Indonesia, the commons museum is a speculative concept to imagine counter-authoritarian, decolonial institutions based on radical pedagogy, vernacular archiving, and community-based techniques of life.

For two weeks, Framer Framed presents a library of resources and reproductions inspired to the multi-purpose libraries of the commons museums communities. Through a diverse collection of textiles, clothes, fairy tales, books, drawings, animal figurines, essays and other materials that pertain to the universe of the book, the display is an ode to these libraries as spaces for reading, copying, playing and being together. In this same spirit, we warmly invite you to sit down, chat, snack, read, copy, colour-in and make worlds!

Artist: Nuraini Juliastuti.
Curator: Sara Giannini

Opening times
15 – 25 Feb 2024
Tuesday – Sunday, 12:00-18:00
Free entry

Programme

Book launch
17 February 2024
14.30 – 17.30hr
Free with registration

Guided tour with Nuraini Juliastuti
21 February 2024
16.30 – 18.00hr

Acknowledgements

Stories of Wounds and Wonder is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution within the frame of Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies (2022-23). Its release closes the Edition IX Finale Programme, which took place between September 2023 and February 2024 across Amsterdam venues. If I Can’t Dance is financially supported by the Mondriaan Fund, AFK, Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

The launch events are co-presented by If I Can’t Dance and Framer Framed and are generously supported by the project Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

Links

• Metropolis M - Stories of Wounds and Wonders
• If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution

Agenda

Network

Astrit Ismaili

Artist

Reza Afisina

Cempaka aka Marishka Soekarna

Artist

Mercedes Azpilicueta

Artist

Sara Giannini

Curator

Nuraini Juliastuti

Researcher and writer