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.