Visiting Commoning projects in Java

I was very privileged to travel to Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya in Java, Indonesia, with my friend Ali Crosby between the 6th and 21st of December last year, to visit ‘neighbourhood commoning projects with independent libraries’.

The trip was part of Ali’s ongoing research into design collaboration between Indonesian and Australian designers, artists, and activists.

Ali and I are both janitors at Frontyard Projects, a not-only-artist-run-space in Marrickville Sydney (that’s how we met). Frontyard has it’s own library. We were looking to glean and exchange ideas and techniques for tending it from the inspiring independent libraries in Java.

I was really lucky to have Ali introduce me to the wonderful people she knows around Java. I left the OpenAustralia Foundation in October and I’m now in the middle of a six month semi-break to see what might be a good thing to put my energy into next. It was an invaluable experience to meet the people who make the spaces we visited.

We’ve been making lots of notes over at the research project’s website.

There’s photos on the @indoaustdesignfutures Instagram and more to come on Flickr.