Cities Without Maps/Kota Tanpa Peta

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Cities Without Maps/ Kota Tanpa Peta

Cities Without Maps - Kota Tanpa Peta, 2008, Indonesian/English, isbn: 978-0-9805470-0-9.
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24 pages.

Cities Without Maps - Kota Tanpa Peta is an artistic mapping project for two Kampungs, Ratmakan and Jagalan, along the Code River (pronounced cho-day), Yogyakarta, Indonesia which was produced as part of an Asialink residency, 2008.

Ratmakan and Jagalan are areas, typical of many of the new urban communities in Indonesia, which have hitherto existed without a map based on any Cartesian principles of perspective and scale. Beginning the process of making a map – for a place which exists relatively happily without one -presented us with the challenge of reinventing what a map is. Do we just map the geographic space or do we map other social aspects which constitute this physical space? For example, how does a map reflect issues such as how many people live in each house or how space is used differently by men and women, older or younger people? What purpose does a map represent for a community who has shaky legal ownership of the land they live on, and who navigate between houses based on long term memory of which families have lived there? How do we map things like the numerous ghost stories which collect in a community built on a former grave-yard and which provide traces of the lives of past residents? How do we include the numerous social maps inked directly onto the body through the strong tattoo culture in Kali Code?

This project is a mapping of the community, in collaboration with some of its members, where we view space as a combination of both its physical and social aspects. We decided that a map is not just a two dimensional object but a more complex representation of the various connections which make up a specific location. This project has been generated out of drawing and mapping workshops and discussions in the local area and video documentation of interviews with community members about their relationship to the area.

This mapping project challenges the notion of the "monolithic metropolis" by looking at the various gaps and striated spaces that exist within city life and the ways in which these spaces will always conflict with attempts at spatial homogenisation and/or gentrification.

Cities Without Maps - Kota Tanpa Peta 20 mins DVD PAL (Indonesian and English subtitles), Publication in English and Indonesian.