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Nuraini Juliastuti

Commons Museums

Pedagogies for Taking Ownership of What is Lost
Worlding Public Cultures
Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2024
ISBN 978-3-96558-070-1 | Paperback | 12.50 EUR | vii, 89 pp. | 17 figures | 17.8 cm x 12.7 cm
ISBN 978-3-96558-071-8 | PDF | Open Access | 17 figures | 16.2 MB
ISBN 978-3-96558-072-5 | EPUB | Open Access | 17 figures | 16.3 MB
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This chapbook centres pedagogy within a new model of museum practice that prioritizes community. It focuses on two cultural institutions in Indonesia, the Pagesangan School in Yogyakarta and the Lakoat.Kujawas in Mollo, East Nusa Tenggara, and uses the concept of the ‘commons museums’, which encompasses heritage, memory, and knowledge production to shape futures. The historical theft of cultural heritage and the extraction of natural resources are situated in Indonesia’s post-Reformation context, with collective archives becoming methodologies for survival. The commons museum expands perspectives around restitution, foregrounding collective research and community struggles as instruments for restoring justice and recovering knowledge.
Nuraini Juliastuti is a translocal practicing researcher and writer who focuses on art organizations, activism, illegality, alternative cultural production, and everyday practices of vernacular archiving. In 2024, she was a Research Fellow at the Research Center for Material Culture in the Netherlands, exploring ideas around her concept of ‘Museum Agriculture for Multiple Beings’. She teaches in the Masters programme at the Fine Art Department of the HKU University of the Arts, Utrecht. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Leiden University. In 1999, she co-founded the Kunci Study Forum & Collective in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In 2022, she conducted a research performance commission from the arts organization ‘If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution’, as part of ‘Edition IX–Bodies and Technologies’, for which she produced an experimental children's book, Stories of Wounds and Wonder (2024). In collaboration with Kunci Study Forum & Collective, she co-edited a special edition of March: A Journal of Art & Strategy titled ‘Tools for Radical Study: A Collection of Manuals’ (2024). From 2022 to 2023, she developed the ‘Nina bell f. House Museum’ for the Singapore Biennale 2022, with others in and around the Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons.
Keywords: commons museum; pedagogy; Indonesia; community-based cultural spaces; extraction; knowledge production; collective memory; community education; museum organization; decolonization
Rights: © by the author(s). Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This chapbook invites us to reconsider our approach in the production of knowledge through a discussion of alternative pedagogy in Indonesia. Nuraini Juliastuti presents two highly compelling community-based schools in Central Java and East Nusa Tenggara, to discuss how their projects simultaneously challenged and enriched national/local knowledge, while remaining attuned to the global conversation. Nuraini admirably weaves the complex threads of Commoning, museology, Indonesian political history, and theories of pedagogy in this volume, which is an important contribution that enables an understanding of Indonesia’s post-authoritarian cultural landscape. — Wulan Dirgantoro, Lecturer in Contemporary Art, The University of Melbourne
Nuraini Juliastuti’s proposal of the commons museum is a vital contribution to rethinking public heritage and cultural institutions today. At a time when the destructive colonial and imperial foundations of western museums are increasingly exposed, she analyses just what exactly places for culture and memory could become, using specific examples that emerge out of Indonesian community building initiatives. Commons museums provide tools for thinking about transforming the use of public archives and collections across a damaged world. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in following non-extractive, decolonial, and de-modern paths out of the cultural impasse that defines western art and society today. — Charles Esche, Director, Van Abbemuseum
Part of Worlding Public Cultures
Title
Commons Museums
Subtitle
Pedagogies for Taking Ownership of What is Lost
Author(s)
Nuraini Juliastuti
Bio(s)
Nuraini Juliastuti is a translocal practicing researcher and writer who focuses on art organizations, activism, illegality, alternative cultural production, and everyday practices of vernacular archiving. In 2024, she was a Research Fellow at the Research Center for Material Culture in the Netherlands, exploring ideas around her concept of ‘Museum Agriculture for Multiple Beings’. She teaches in the Masters programme at the Fine Art Department of the HKU University of the Arts, Utrecht. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Leiden University. In 1999, she co-founded the Kunci Study Forum & Collective in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In 2022, she conducted a research performance commission from the arts organization ‘If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution’, as part of ‘Edition IX–Bodies and Technologies’, for which she produced an experimental children's book, Stories of Wounds and Wonder (2024). In collaboration with Kunci Study Forum & Collective, she co-edited a special edition of March: A Journal of Art & Strategy titled ‘Tools for Radical Study: A Collection of Manuals’ (2024). From 2022 to 2023, she developed the ‘Nina bell f. House Museum’ for the Singapore Biennale 2022, with others in and around the Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons.
Identifier
https://doi.org/10.37050/wpc-ca-04
Description
This chapbook centres pedagogy within a new model of museum practice that prioritizes community. It focuses on two cultural institutions in Indonesia, the Pagesangan School in Yogyakarta and the Lakoat.Kujawas in Mollo, East Nusa Tenggara, and uses the concept of the ‘commons museums’, which encompasses heritage, memory, and knowledge production to shape futures. The historical theft of cultural heritage and the extraction of natural resources are situated in Indonesia’s post-Reformation context, with collective archives becoming methodologies for survival. The commons museum expands perspectives around restitution, foregrounding collective research and community struggles as instruments for restoring justice and recovering knowledge.
Is Part Of
Worlding Public Cultures
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
23 July 2024
Subject
commons museum
pedagogy
Indonesia
community-based cultural spaces
extraction
knowledge production
collective memory
community education
museum organization
decolonization
Rights
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Language
en-GB
number of pages
vii, 89
Table Of Contents
Note on Names
Introduction: ‘Commons Museums’ as a Counter-Authoritative Form of ‘Worlding’
Pagesangan and Lakoat.Kujawas as Historical Bodies
Different Seasons at Work
How to Talk Back: Training Sensibilities for Diverse Knowledge
Non-Extractive Attitude: Community Research Methodology and Knowledge Production
Concluding Notes
References
has manifestation
ISBN 978-3-96558-070-1 | Paperback | 12.50 EUR | vii, 89 pp. | 17 figures | 17.8 cm x 12.7 cm
ISBN 978-3-96558-071-8 | PDF | Open Access | 17 figures | 16.2 MB
ISBN 978-3-96558-072-5 | EPUB | Open Access | 17 figures | 16.3 MB

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Cite as: Nuraini Juliastuti, Commons Museums: Pedagogies for Taking Ownership of What is Lost, Worlding Public Cultures (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2024) <https://doi.org/10.37050/wpc-ca-04>