Atelier KITLV: Declaring Distance

Design by Chen Jhen, in collaboration with Sidney Islam.

8 Apr –
9 Apr 2022

Atelier KITLV: Declaring Distance

Atelier KITLV and Framer Framed invite you for the hybrid presentation Declaring Distance: Bandung-Leiden, a trans-local exchange on ways of imagining and engaging with the colonial archive. The presentation, as part of the first phase of artist Theo Frids Hutabarat’s Atelier KITV residency program, will kick off with a series of online discussions on the 8th and 9th of April via Zoom.

Declaring Distance: Bandung-Leiden will kick off with an online public program on the 8th and 9th of April 2022 via Zoom, bringing together polyphonic voices of the Bandung-based collaborators and researchers from KITLV. The series of online roundtables and film screenings will connect local communities and students from Integrated Arts, Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung with a wider audience in the Netherlands and elsewhere to exchange ideas regarding issues raised by the presentation.

You can watch the event live-streamed bellow on the YouTube Channel from our partner Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung, Indonesia.

Declaring Distance: Bandung-Leiden Day 1

Declaring Distance: Bandung-Leiden Day 2

How to engage with the colonial archive

Declaring Distance: Bandung-Leiden is a hybrid presentation that assembles ways of imagining how engaging with the colonial archive can be used to communicate the lived realities of the local context in Bandung, where artist Theo Frids Hutabarat currently lives and works. How can local communities return and give meaning to the “local subject” when certain realities of the archive are fragmented and “othered,” while becoming (digitally) accessible with the plethora of information nowadays? Various collaborators from Bandung are invited to present their works at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, turning the space into a site of exploration to speculate on an “unmediated version” of history through forms of archives, symbols, and expressions.

The presentation running from the 8th of April to 29th of May at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space will display a variety of works, studies, and installations made by collaborators from different disciplines; activate pop-up cinemas, musical performances, and culinary experiences based on discoveries of archival materials. These offsite events will form a foundation for visitors in Bandung to stop by, look in, and engage in discussions about shared and isolated narratives from the past through all senses.

Combining off-site and online programs, Declaring Distance: Bandung-Leiden aims to create spaces to imagine how artistic practice relates to archive-collection practice and what possible impact those practices could bring to a broader discourse on history, coloniality, civic rights, ecology, etc. The materials generated through the hybrid forms of encounters will serve as future archival resources for Theo to develop his project in the next phase of his residency program in collaboration with Integrated Arts – Parahyangan Catholic University, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, KITLV and Framer Framed when he arrives in the Netherlands.

The program at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space in Bandung runs from 8th of April to 29th of May. The whole program is free and open to all.

Declaring Distance: Bandung-Leiden is part of Theo Frids Hutabarat’s Atelier KITLV annual residency program, in collaboration with Framer Framed. The annual residency program invites one or more fellows, working, in close collaboration with KITLV researchers, on the intersections of arts, social sciences and the humanities.

Collaborators

Selasar Sunaryo Art Space
Founded in 1998, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space (SSAS) actively promotes the development of all aspects of art, throughout Bandung and Indonesia. SSAS initiates opportunities for national and international cooperation and network with artists, curators, critics, researchers, and all those who are concerned with public education through art and cultural activities.

Integrated Arts – Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung
The new program under the Faculty of Philosophy aims to promote a different approach to arts education: inherently interdisciplinary, put emphasis on aesthetics and sensibilities as the integrating factors of art practices, and work closely with local contexts and communities.