GoetheHaus Foyer: Living at the Urban Seafront

Opening: 06.05.2025 | 6 PM
Exhibition: 07.05.–01.06.2025 | 12–8 PM
*Closed every Monday

Indonesia—home to the world’s third-longest coastline—is experiencing a slow-moving crisis that unfolds not only through dramatic floods or sudden erosion, but also through the unnoticed rhythms of daily life. Rising seas, land subsidence, and neglected infrastructure are reshaping the country’s coastal communities in quiet, persistent ways.
 
"Living at the Urban Seafront" traces the experiences of communities living on the edge: at the intersection of land and sea — risk and resilience. Spanning urban shorelines from Jakarta, Bekasi, and Gresik to Makassar and even Bremen, in Germany, the exhibition offers an intimate look at how communities are adapting to an uncertain future. The works from fifteen photographers are selected through an open call by six interdisciplinary juries: photographers, researcher, scientist, exhibition designer, and activist.
 
Photographs and stories reveal a range of realities: embankments and dikes holding back the tide, families rebuilding homes on sinking land, and settlements of repeatedly displaced people. Sometimes, resilience is the new resistance. Other times, it looks like waiting—for aid, for the next calamity, for Godot.
 
This is not just an exhibition about the devastating consequences of the climate crisis. It is about reflection far from the tidal floods and receding shorelines: the endurance, memory, and everyday life on ground that is, quite literally, disappearing.
 
Come see how life continues—against the current. Let’s push for a change where hope triumphs over disaster.

Participating photographers: Aan Melliana, Abyan Madani, Agus Susanto, Arie Basuki, Dikye Ariani, Djuli Pamungkas, Fernando Randy, Idealita Ismanto, Iqro Rinaldi, Kay Michalak, Muhammad Fauzan, Nafiah Solikhah, Nikolai Wolff, Qeis Sulthon, Rejeky Kene, Wiagung Prayudha, Yuan Adriles.