In 2012, Abidin Kusno’s book Politik Ekonomi Perumahan Rakyat & Utopia Jakarta was published in Bahasa Indonesia, with a cover image of a common sight of Jakarta: an unfinished housing tower acting as a background for the city’s ubiquitous street sellers, both permanent and mobile.1 Today, that building is still standing in limbo with no sign of activity. The building is not moving forward, either constructively or destructively. Time is rendered as if in a standstill. At the same time, Abidin recently lamented the rapid pace of change in governmental politics, at both the state and municipal level, which rendered his 2023 book, Jakarta: The City of a Thousand Dimensions “already expired on arrival.”2 Being able to constantly dwell in these contrasting understandings—of time, space, and power, and in his persistence to be in the middle, opposing binaries in his reading of the city—is one of the qualities Abidin possesses, and what prompted us to stage a series of conversations with him. The writing method of what follows, which is a transcribed, translated, edited, repositioned, and rewritten summary of those discussions, is inevitably also one of “middling.” Our conversations strengthened the spatial understanding and arguments for Gudskul’s collective practice, while imagining ways to move forward with our struggles.
—farid rakun and Rifandi Nugroho (Gudskul)
In the Middle of Change
Spatially, Jakarta is a city that has gone far beyond Sukarno’s expectations in the 1950s, when he demanded a three-dimensional modernist city.3 Today the city has acquired a thousand dimensions, as Seno Gumira Ajidarma put it.4 It has become a city without a single perspective. It has grown to become many “cities” within a city. We can consider ruru, or ruangrupa (from which Gudskul emerged) as a product of a distinct time: of transition from the statecraft of Suharto’s New Order (1966–98) to the discursive formation of the post-Suharto era. The 1998 upheaval which brought down the Suharto regime was a turning point. ruru was established in 2000. That was a crucial period, when the shift to a new era was deeply felt; the center—the core of the Javanese concept of power—had become “loose,” if not weakened and irrelevant. This change came in tandem with a change in people’s sentiment: a desire to participate with one’s own voice, from below, and without being framed by the authority to be audible.
This political process of decentralization was mirrored in the art world. Taman Ismail Marzuki (Ismail Marzuki Park, TIM) was built during Ali “Bang” Sadikin’s governorship of Jakarta (1966–77).5 Sadikin sympathized with artists who were previously “homeless,” who gathered around Pasar Senen (Senen Market) and moved from one place to another. He dedicated TIM to serve as their “home,” and because of its central location in Jakarta, it quickly became acknowledged as a center for the production of modern art. After Sadikin stepped down as governor, there were issues of governance, funding, and control of artistic expression, but TIM nevertheless remained a hub.
Several members of ruru/Gudskul met one another for the first time when they were students at IKJ (Jakarta Institute for the Arts), which is located inside TIM. So in some ways, several senior Gudskul members were products of TIM. But after their “graduation,” and in conjunction with the collapse of the Suharto regime, they sought to liberate themselves from established practices of art institutions like IKJ/TIM. They sought to build a “collective” of their own, which suggests horizontal comradeship. When they looked for a place, they looked for houses in the city that were available and relatively inexpensive to rent during that post-Krismon period.6 Pooling resources together, they were able to rent a house in Tebet. ruru thus was born in a borrowed space, in a rented house.
This was also the case with other collectives. The catalog to an event co-organized by Ade Darmawan, “Fixer,” mentions that almost all (Indonesian art) collectives at the time (including those outside Jakarta) started within residences.7 When asked to send pictures of their workshops, they all sent photos of their homes. This is, on the one hand, reflective of the necessity of homeschooling in times of crisis. However, household enterprises were quite popular in the climate of the post-1998 socio-economic crisis. When central power collapsed, many people started hustling not in the Central Business District or other formal places for commerce, but in their own homes.8 Decentralization wasn’t only for street vendors, but also for the middle class. Homes were transformed into places of business and all sorts of things.
Alongside all of this, there was also a halting of real estate development and a dramatic decline in property value, which resulted in an abundance of vacant houses. As a result, many residential areas changed function. No one really seemed to be bothered by the makeshift billboards that began popping up, or the restaurants or repair services. But there was lots of garbage around. Everything was permitted to grow without permits—who cares to ask for permission from a disintegrating authority? These residential portals, which were all self-initiated, managed by privately hired security guards or by community members themselves, started to proliferate.
At the same time, many protests erupted around the city. As people lost their factory jobs in Jakarta’s outskirts, people only had two options: return to their villages/hometowns, or take over the city center. Most chose to pursue their right to the city.9 Some took to the streets, while others built makeshift houses under flyovers and tollroads. People dared to occupy lands that were owned by companies or by the state, and attempts to evict them were met with resistance not just from the affected but also from the media, which by then had become more pro-rakyat.10 The streets used to be a disciplinary space, but were now occupied by people. In Tebet, where ruru first rented a house, the street was transformed from “lalu lintas” (traffic) to a “panggung” (stage) for performance and livelihood. ruru was born and grew up in the middle of all these changes in spatial practice in Jakarta.
Personal spaces were also undergoing transformation at the time, as a reflection of the broader changes in the city and the nation. During the Suharto era, the living room, for instance, served as a place to display order and hierarchy. Things like where the sofa and chairs are placed, who sits where, defined who was an outsider, who was a guest, who is higher and lower in the family. When ruru moved into their first rented house in Tebet, they got rid of all the furniture in its living room. This was perhaps to save space, but there was also a feeling that everyone could be accommodated on the floor. People sat down in a circle so that there would be no hierarchy. Rather, it was a place to gather and connect with each other. The boundary between outside and inside became blurry.
Governing the Middle
In the post-1998 environment, the house became symbolic. It was from the house or the neighborhood that networks were formed. As these networks emerged and developed, people took over the city. The already loose planning of Jakarta further fueled the desire for self-expression among those living and working there. The streets were bustling with innovations. The collapse of a centralized regime led to the informal becoming the norm of the post-Suharto era. But the practice of informality was not new to Jakarta at the time. Indeed, informality not only existed as a tradition in Jakarta, but was arguably cultivated under Suharto as a form of New Order statecraft. The ability of informality to provide opportunities for survival in the post–New Order era therefore occurred because informality had been maintained throughout the New Order era.
The New Order state inherited many aspects of the colonial state which governed the population indirectly, through local headmen. The Dutch cared only about the interests of Europeans, and kampungs (traditional villages) were largely left alone.11 Informality grew over time, but was always maintained or kept under control by the state. During the New Order era, informal networks grew in the belly of centralization. But these networks were not always new or progressive; they could be extremely oppressive, and accustomed to serving power. An interesting example of this is the vigilantes’ organizations and the figure of the preman.12 A Preman historically represents “middle power.” They are a product of power but it is not always serving power either. That’s why they are called “vrijman” (free man), someone who is relied on and yet often distrusted by both the state and the people. Under the security-obsessed New Order regime, the premans were brought under control, i.e. mobilized when needed to manage the population. One could argue that the New Order controlled the city in and through these local thugs dressed in security uniforms. The line that separated polisi and preman was very thin.13 And in the aftermath of 1998, when Sutiyoso was the governor of Jakarta, urban activists were frustrated by the behavior of premans.14 Premans were rampant in the post-Suharto era. They were the army of informality that served the New Order, but let us not forget, this middle power could be seen as a threat to the state as well.15
Kampungs are also a kind of middle. They are not necessarily peripheral or marginal, nor are they completely detached from the center. They are also not fully controlled from above by the government. The “middle” can be a blind spot, a left-alone “independent” space that ironically plays a central role in the functioning of the city. At the city level, what we call marginal does not refer to a position outside of power. Their position is within the power structure, but they lie in an area that is somewhat gray. These kampungs, despite always being displaced and deterritorialized, still exist and are growing like a rhizome. How many years has Indonesia been under militaristic authoritarianism and yet it has never become like Singapore, which has full control over the fate and the fortune of its kampungs? This does not mean that the state is weak, but rather that there is a particular tradition on how to govern the middle. Perhaps the center in fact cannot hold without loosening its grip on the periphery, or power sharing in the middle. It requires a statecraft for the center to give power to the middle to take care of those below. It is not a weakness, but just a different tradition of governing.
Over the past few decades in Jakarta, and Indonesia as a whole, there has been a shift in the state’s approach to gaining support. In the past, following the Javanese concept of power, the state claimed power through the idea of the center: everything was for and from the state, including the power for the state to ignore and exploit the population. The state felt entitled to be at the center, and people were expected to submit to the state’s right to be at the center. The President thus appointed governors of Jakarta with military ties, always high-ranking officers, as a signifier of force. It was only after Sutiyoso’s era (1997–2007) that non-military figures could serve as governors. On the national level, direct elections have also only occurred since 2004, gradually shifting the system from authoritarianism to populism (though the line between the two is not always clear). Jokowi, for instance, who became president through direct vote in 2014, betrayed the hope that initially gave him populist support by using his popularity to make space for “The Killer General” Prabowo Subianto to take over at the end of his own regime ten years later.16 This new political shift could erode decentralization, which would lead to the revival of the “authority of the state.” It all indicates how populism can be used for undemocratic purposes.
The Middle Stage
ruangrupa (ruru) has itself been influenced and consciously shaped in relation to this political transformation. At first, after 2014, with the election of Jokowi and the naive hope in seeing a civilian figure emerge as a presidential candidate, the scale of their footprint grew: from a rented house, they moved to a much larger space, in Gudang Sarinah Ekosistem, joining forces with other collectives in Jakarta. Populism always emerges with a strong desire for a stage. And a stage needs a body, ideally a large crowd, to collectively witness a spectacle. Gudang Sarinah, due to its size, was a “stage” that drew attention. It is also a gudang (warehouse) for registering a record of a performance: a place to make history. Funders, sponsors, or anyone willing to organize an event dared to go all out at Gudang Sarinah, because the number of visitors was guaranteed to be large. What was previously on the periphery suddenly became the focus. In Gudang Sarinah, there was no way to get away from politics, since it had become more and more part of everyday life in Jakarta.
Political engagement in Jakarta is a phenomenon of the post-Suharto era. It was avoided during the Suharto era, because it was binarized by the regime: politics belongs to the state, otherwise it belongs to the resistance. There was nothing in between. Today, politics is up for grabs. It is no longer the domain of the state or politicians or political parties. It can take many forms, many directions, and it can offer opportunities. It has entered popular culture. “Politics” has been liberated from the domain of political science and the state. It has become the urban culture of post-Suharto Jakarta. Everyone can engage in politics and invest different meanings into it. Surely it has become more difficult to navigate, and it is difficult to define “populist” politics, “practical” politics, or “politics” per se. Such an attempt nevertheless shows our wish to know where to position ourselves in this or that kind of politics. What we know is that we can’t talk about Jakarta without talking about politics.
At Gudang Sarinah, lessons about practical politics slowly began to emerge. These lessons made ruru realize that they had grown too large. Practical politics did not give them time to know themselves. Instant politics offered no time for cultivating values. And without values, they felt they could not handle uncertainty or recognize the possibilities available to them. Without values, what could they offer Jakarta? So in 2018 they decided to scale down to a venue with a maximum capacity of 150 people, and together with the shared resources, long-time friendships, and knowledge of two other collectives (Serrum and Grafis Huru Hara), founded Gudskul.17 This has allowed ruru to continue cultivating the values that serve as a political and ethical foundation to their practice. The values they developed were kick-started first and foremost by humor. After that came others, such as sufficiency, generosity, curiosity, political and ethical awareness, and so on.18 These values have emerged from the process of experiencing Jakarta and its evolving politics. They also serve as the foundation for Gudskul’s educational pedagogy, where there is a responsibility towards sustained knowledge production.
Middling Values
The values Gudskul has been experimenting with and cultivating were learned from the change that have taken place in Jakarta and by documenting and reflecting on what has been left out in the city’s march for endless creative destruction. While Gudskul is not technically located within a kampung, it has a kampungan feeling.19 Gudskul initially had no permanent space, always renting or borrowing. Even when it acquired a space, it still felt as though it had nothing, eventually renting another space elsewhere to carry out activities. The land and building now owned by Gudskul (to prevent it from re-entering the free market) continue to be used suboptimally. There’s always a desire to start something new in a new place. Because the agency is blurry, committing to long and complicated decisions requires rehashing what it truly means to “own” something. At Gudskul, there is a crisis of agency, as well as a crisis of space. Who has the right to do what? Awareness of agency through space may emerge from the crisis.
Gudskul has not yet succeeded in forming a new economic model in practice. It is still playing with existing types of economies—formal, informal, and all their gradations. But considering that Gudskul has a territory to “centralize” its activities, it can be open to various economic activities and sources as part of or in addition to artistic productions. In Jakarta, there seems to be a binary relationship between home, workplace, and the streets. In spaces like Gudskul, people don’t appear to be working, yet they are. Sometimes they get permission to work, but end up working while hanging out and discussing things. These are things that could actually be done at home. Perhaps Gudskul will become a dwelling, eliminating the journey between home and work, and the need to spend money on commuting.
The question for today is what has happened to middle power. Decentralization has opened up spaces for the center to localize its power and for local power to play a more independent role. ruru as an “organization” has moved from the “undercurrent” of the Suharto era to a position of leadership (with Gudskul), in the post-Suharto era. Gudskul is not quite at the margin, nor in the center. It is more in the “middle,” redefining what it means to be “independent.” Power will always try to use the collective to serve the interest of certain political groups, and yet ruru works to speak against power and injustices, to transcend narrow interests in order to give voice and life to the collective and the marginalized. Gudskul works in and through the “middle” which power continually seeks to control.
The history of Gudskul is inseparable from the longer history of governing informality. But Gudskul doesn’t manage informality from above. Rather, it governs from below, or now, perhaps, from the middle. The post-authoritarian era has given rise to the opportunity to govern autonomously (from the middle) without falling under the authority of a new regime of power. Histories have often been written in terms of the center and the margin, but the middle has been overlooked. There is a need to write about the history of the middle—the space in which Gudskul operates.
We don’t need to be too ambitious in thinking that Gudskul will last forever. We wish Gudskul would last forever, but futurity doesn’t work that way. We never know how sustainable Jakarta and Gudskul will be, but an ecosystem needs values for orientation in surviving the city. No matter how long a collective lasts, one of its legacies is those values. What is to be remembered is not only the objects and spaces that are produced, but the process of living in and through an evolving Jakarta and beyond. The challenge facing Gudskul today is how to function as a “middling” pedagogical center that is at once critical and sustainable while upholding the value of the humanities that the collective has learned throughout its life so far.
Abidin Kusno, Politik Ekonomi Perumahan Rakyat & Utopia Jakarta (Yogyakarta: Penerbit Ombak, 2012).
farid rakun, conversation, retrieved from memory, July 25, 2024; Abidin Kusno, Jakarta: The City of a Thousand Dimensions (Singapore: NUS Press, 2023).
The title of this piece, “Building Ideas from the Middle,” is the literal translation of “Ing Madya Mangun Karsa,” the middle part of the educational trilogy coined by the Father of Indonesian Education, Ki Hajar Dewantara, via the establishment of Perguruan Tamansiswa. See “Berdirinya Perguruan Tamansiswa,” Tamansiswa Pusat, ➝; and Edward Ridwan, “Makna Ing Ngarsa Sung Tuladha, Ing Madya Mangun Karsa, Tut Wuri Handayani,” detikSulsel, May 2, 2023, ➝. Coincidentally, at the time of writing (July 2025), ruangrupa is staging a work at ArtJog 2025 in Yogyakarta, entitled Perguruan Tamanruru, riffing on the original Yogyakarta-born Perguruan Tamansiswa. See “ruangrupa - Special Project ARTJOG 2025,” posted August 26, 2025, by ARTJOG, YouTube, ➝.
Seno Gumira Ajidarma, “Dimensi Ruang: Kisah-kisah Jakarta,” in Affair: Obrolan Tentang Jakarta (Affair: Conversations About Jakarta) (Yogyakarta: Buku Baik, 2004).
“Krismon” is an Indonesian term referring to the “monetary crisis” that happened in Indonesia during the Asian crisis of 1997–98. See Takao Fukuchi, “Inflationary Burst and Free Fall of the Indonesian Economy during the Krismon Period—A Vicious Circle of Real and Monetary Aspects,” The Developing Economies 38, no. 3 (September 2000): 257–307, ➝.
Ardi Yunanto, ed., Fixer: Exhibition of Alternative Spaces & Art Groups in Indonesia (Jakarta: North Art Space, 2010).
For an exploration of this time, see Abidin Kusno, “Whither Nationalist Urbanism? Public Life in Governor Sutiyoso’s Jakarta,” Urban Studies 41, no. 12 (2004); reprinted in The Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in Indonesia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).
M. Cohen, “Easing Labour’s Pain,” Far Eastern Economic Review, January 29, 1998, 17.
Rakyat literally means “people,” or “citizen.” Pro-rakyat is a position signaling an egalitarian stance that belongs to something (as opposed to power), in this case the mass media.
Kampung literally means “countryside,” or “village,” and in this instance is used to refer to urban villages. For more on kampung, see Fani Rachmita and Deliani Siregar, “In Jakarta’s Urban Villages, Women AreMoving Mobility Forward,” Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), December 2018, ➝.
A vernacular Indonesian term, derived from the Dutch vrijman (free man), preman refers to a position, often violent, of necessary evils. The question is always: necessary for whom? See “Preman (Indonesian gangster),” Wikipedia, ➝.
See the collection of essays by Joshua Barker on Bandung (which applies to Jakarta) which is now available as a book. Joshua Barker, State of Fear: Policing a Postcolonial City (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024).
Such as the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC), a non-governmental organization (est. 1997) that works with marginalized urban communities. See UPC website, ➝.
See David Bourchier, “Crime, Law and State Authority in Indonesia,” in State and Civil Society in Indonesia, ed. Arief Budiman (Monash Papers on Southeast Asia, no. 22, 1990), 177–214. For an immediate report and reflection, see: Onghokham, “Gali-gali dan Masyarakat Kita,” Tempo, May 4, 1983.
On Prabowo Subianto's murderous past, see for example Ryan Grim, host, in conversation with Allan Nairn, “‘America’s Fair-Haired Boy,’ Notorious Mass Murderer, on Brink of Indonesian Presidency,” Deconstructed podcast, February 17, 2024, ➝.
Serrum is an art collective focused on art and education based in Jakarta, established in 2006. The name “Serrum” is derived from the combination of the words “share” and “room,” which, when joing together mean “sharing room.” Serrum focuses on issues related to education, socio-politics, and urban themes, using a presentation approach that combines art and education. See Serrum website, ➝; Grafis Huru Hara (GHH) is a graphic artist collective from Jakarta initiated in 2012. GHH emphasize their practice on methods of exploration, experiment, and education, using print as their ultimate medium. See “Grafis Huru Hara,” Gudskul, ➝.
“Values” here refer to ruangrupa’s lumbung values, consisting of humor, generosity, being locally anchored, independence, regeneration, transparency and sufficiency, among others. For more on lumbung and its values, see “Glossary,” documenta fifteen, ➝.
Derived from kampung, meaning “village,” or “rural,” kampungan refers to a quality resembling provincial, plebeian.
