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Mapping Invisible Cities The diverse themes and approaches in this exhibition are like fragments of the unseen and unnoticed ordinariness hidden in the city. When these fragments are joined in one single frame, like a map, they begin to show what was formerly invisible. In mapping, we make our cities more obvious, and bring to the surface what we do not (want to) see or notice and force us to enter neighborhoods we generally avoid, and to see their normality from within. It shows the juxtaposition of green flora to steel structures, painting our nostalgia for a ‘nature’ that always disappears. It also injects a freshness and invites us to experience city on a more intimate scale. Map shows the organization of space and our awareness of it is built; from the relations between humans; between man and motors; between people, cars, streets and buildings. This map proves that there is an order to the chaos. It reveals how multiple uses for regulated. Apart from showing us a route from point A to point B, a map can also show movement itself. The human throngs in intersection and the movement of motorcycles on the street are maps which show movement and stillness side by side in the same space. Mapping is also an act of remembering. It documents the ephemeral traces of large scale urban development; marks the pattern of decay and forgetting that cover the city. In mapping we excavate various layers of life in the city, and then we can put them back together again in contradictory and harmonious ways, stands life next to death in homes and grave sites or depicts the harmony of the modern next to the traditional. People in maps could presented in connection between interior and exterior of houses to their inhabitants’ social class; or as a social investigation of peculiar profession in big cities. And finally, maps are tied to the imagination and to abstractions. In this kind of map we can see the monstrous side of megapolitans, the two-dimensional illusion from the three-dimensional buildings’ reality. This exhibition is not a fulfillment of a distinctive of Southeast Asian photographic tradition. But it is a map that is not only give insights and experiences of Southeast Asia’s largest cities, but we have the ability to see into the future of Southeast Asian photography. |
Alex Supartono |
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 Alexander Supartono born 1972 in Mojokerto, Indonesia is a Photography Curator and Lecturer at the Dept. of Photography in the Faculty of Film and Television, Jakarta Art Institute. He is the author of numerous photography articles and reviews in various mass media and national and international journals. “Mohammad and Me” is his latest project, broadly cast as a way of perceiving the various dimensions of religion and social life in Indonesia. He is one of the 2008 Critical Mass jurors of the Photolucida, Oregon, USA and is now pursuing graduate study at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, USA. |
