Abidin Kusno sees further than architectural works

Abidin Kusno sees further than architectural works

Maria Endah Hulupi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Jakarta has more than just historical monuments to reflect its
culture. Young author Abidin Kusno has been helping Jakartans
gain a better insight of the capital by publishing information
about urban spaces like public areas, housing complexes and even
densely-populated kampongs (villages).

Abidin said urban spaces not only reflected a city's culture
and history but were also important aspects that "actively
shaped" the inhabitants.

Abidin, the author of Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture,
Urban Space and Political Cultures in Indonesia, is currently an
assistant professor at the school of art history at Binghamton
University, New York.

Though he looks a little shy, he shows a great interest when
talking about the correlation between architects and culture. He
compared the situation in the capital during the rule of first
president Sukarno to that of second president Soeharto.

Sukarno, a building engineer, had wished to establish a sense
of national unity in the heterogeneous country. Public spaces --
including monuments, parks and the Bung Karno Sports Complex in
Senayan, Central Jakarta -- were designed to enable people from
different social classes to mingle and express their aspirations.

"Sukarno was tired of the traditional mentality and wished to
nourish a more modern Indonesia. He, through his architects,
created various modern buildings including Hotel Indonesia in
Central Jakarta, among others," Abidin said.

When Soeharto took over power in 1966, he encouraged the rise
of the middle class. Just like Sukarno, Soeharto also wanted to
highlight the country's heterogeneity under the motto "For the
Sake of the Country's Unity".

The former president, who ruled the country for 32 years, then
built toll roads, real estate, shopping centers and other public
facilities for middle class people while the lower class remained
stuck in their kampongs.

People could no longer gather freely in public places for fear
they might protest against his rule and be classed as dissidents.

"We can still remember the horror of petrus (mysterious
killings) and matius (unidentified corpses) where dead bodies
were left in the streets to scare off residents," Abidin said
during a description of his book.

Besides Behind the Postcolonial, which he wrote before the
bloody 1998 May riots, Abidin also wrote a numbers of papers. Two
of the most recent ones were Remembering/Forgetting the May
riots: Architecture, Violence and the making of Chinese Cultures
in Post 1998 Jakarta and Whither Urban Nationalism? Public life
in Governor Sutiyoso's Jakarta.

Abidin, a graduate of Surabaya-based Petra Christian
University, admitted that it was his mentor Anthony B. King who
encouraged him to study other fields like sociology, public
health, literature and politics to enrich his architectural
perspectives.

"I also admire people like Ben Anderson and Pramoedya Ananta
Toer as they can relate literary imagination with politics. I try
to do the same in architecture. I also love to read books about
the search for identity and social injustices as they inspire me
to reflect on what I can do about them through architectural
fields," Abidin said.

Architects, he explained, are sort of politicians of everyday
lives, although they may not agree.

"Urban space is about decision making. They (the architects)
have a role in influencing how people plan their everyday lives
and sustain lives so they can support or weaken a regime," he
said.

After the fall of the New Order regime, he said, the country's
three successive presidents -- B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid
and Megawati Soekarnoputri -- took office during what he called
as "the declining of the center (government)" period.

Jakarta has seen Governor Sutiyoso fruitlessly attempt to
rebuild the public sense of nationalism by initiating several
projects of national sentiment including the fencing of the
National Monument (Monas) park, the plan to erect statues of
national heroes and the Hotel Indonesia fountain project. These
projects were strongly opposed by Jakartans who believed there
were more important priorities to focus on.

As urban nationalism withers with the weakening of the
government, each element of society created its own center and
people developed a feeling that they belong to Jakarta and that
they can do whatever they can or want to survive the economic
hardships.

This leads to disorderliness and arouses feelings of
insecurity. After the 1998 riots, residents in housing complexes
had protected their neighborhoods with high fences, he said.

"It's a form of democracy but what one element -- in this
case, people in the housing complexes -- perceived as democratic
may not be democratic for others, or those living outside the
fences. This could widen the social gap," Abidin said.

However, apart from giving hints about the political cultures
of the elite, architecture and urban planning can also provide
solutions for inhumane Jakarta.

"High fences are not the answer and I think what we need now
is a social solidarity that can link these centers and abridge
the social gaps but still respect the diversities.

"For this, we also need to establish a synergy between
architecture and other fields like law, public health and women
studies, for example," Abidin said.