On November 19, Whiteboard Journal hosted our fifth meeting at Kinokuniya Plaza Senayan. This month, we focus on the concepts of “place” and “space” in everyday life. How do we perceive our workspaces? To what extent do we feel attached to our “homes”? By sharing our personal experiences or reflections, we tried to answer such questions.
- The word “home” means different things to different people. Some participants think of a physical building that will always be waiting for them, while others think of it – to borrow Avianti Armand’s analogy – as a “place of transit.”
- While the home is often considered as a private space, it actually consists of the multiple privacies of its inhabitants. The sum of these privacies gives “life” to the building itself.
- A place becomes a place once it can be associated with something – a memory or a feeling – otherwise it is just a space that can be easily replaced.
- The typical living arrangement in Jakarta is still very family-oriented. Many working individuals still choose to live with their families even when there are no financial constraints. This might be explained by Indonesia’s collective culture.
- However, those who do choose to live independently do so for two possible reasons: Due to practical reasons (to be closer to their workplace/university) or because they want to break away from the standard arrangement (to create an alternative way of living).
- Some offices have cubicles/partitions while others do not. There are downsides and benefits found in each one, but the effectiveness highly depends on the nature of the job.
- What is a major difference between public and private places? Rules. While the former typically has clear rules that allow or prohibit certain actions, the latter operates according to unwritten rules that are based on mutual expectations of the involved parties.
- While the number of cafes in Jakarta has been increasing at an impressive rate, the “cafe culture” as we know it today is actually nothing new. It is merely one that reflects the current society’s buying power. The tendency for Indonesians to “nongkrong” (hang out) has always been around.
- Social media has changed the way people perceive boundaries. We are rarely aware of the distance that separates our online friends and us.
- Laptops, smartphones and tablets are portals that take us away from the physical places we are in. Can our technological habits change our need for space? Will people of the future be content with smaller living places?
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We would like to thank those who came and contributed to the fifth We Discuss meeting. We hope to see you again in future discussions. Look out for announcements about next month’s discussion on our website’s blog and events section. Or check out our Facebook page, as well as our Twitter and Instagram accounts!
Here is a list of recommended reads that might come in handy on the upcoming discussion on places and spaces!
Architecture and Literature with Avianti Armand
“The only way we can understand life is by order. All chaos is difficult to comprehend. Unconsciously we are always faced with a stimulating condition between chaos and order. Chaos is the cosmos. But we actually have the tendency to look for forms and order. If not, we wouldn’t be able to communicate.”
Avianti Armand then goes on to say:
“The easiest example is in architecture. There is the basic rule of thumb we follow. In houses there is the public area, the private area, and the semi-private area. Each has its own characteristics. So when we design a house we base it on those basic rules. But there are always rooms to break away from that structure.”
How do you think architecture functions as a representation/reflection of our society? While social order is not immediately visible, the structures of buildings are. Will observing the buildings found in a particular city reveal the character of its inhabitants?
Unconventional Spaces with Andra Matin
“I can try to evaluate their taste. Some of their tastes can be explicit; some character traits tend to be implicit. So we base the designs on the interviews and our encounters.”
Before drawing a plan for his clients, architect Andra Martin does his best to find out as much as he can about their preferences. Would you rather have a “sterile” living space that gives you the freedom to modify it as you will or have one that has been meticulously designed to suit your personality and tastes?
by Robin Evans (featured in Building the Mind)
“If anything is described by an architectural plan, it is the nature of human relationships, since the elements whose trace it records – walls, doors, windows and stairs – are employed first to divide and then selectively to re-unite inhabited space. But what is generally absent in even the most elaborately illustrated building is the way human figures will occupy it.”
Why do you think there are differences in the way humans interact in public and private spaces?
featured in Building the Mind)
“It’s easy to achieve a natural calm…trees, shrubs, a few rocks. But that’s not enough. Calm should have a ‘momentness,’ where space has a state of impermanence. Disruption is the manmade intervention, and calm comes from the contrast.”
How do you think that “momentness” can be achieved in a city – especially one that is as chaotic as Jakarta? How do you think it can be achieved at private and public levels?
The Flight from Conversation on the New York Times by Sherry Turkle
“At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work executives text during board meetings. We text (and shop and go on Facebook) during classes and when we’re on dates.”
“In today’s workplace, young people who have grown up fearing conversation show up on the job wearing earphones. Walking through a college library or the campus of a high-tech start-up, one sees the same thing: we are together, but each of us is in our own bubble, furiously connected to keyboards and tiny touch screens.”
Many of us today are loyal dwellers of cyberspace, but this commitment is often fulfilled at the expense of our “real world” connections. Is it possible for us to strike a balance between our online and offline residences?
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
7—9 pm
Kinokuniya Plaza Senayan
(near the language section)
Jl. Asia Afrika 8
Sogo Plaza Senayan Lt. 5
Jakarta 10270
Look out for updates on our Facebook page and Twitter account! If you’d like to share your opinions, or if you have friends who’d like to share theirs, please sign up via e-mail with the subject title “We Discuss” at ! If you have comments or questions, tweet us .
We are only a week away from this month’s meeting. For our fifth discussion, we are going to talk about the relationship between humans, places and spaces.
Anna von Low wrote in her essay, “Faces and Places” that the way we perceive space is strongly tied with how we make sense of our physical existence in society. This goes to show the various interactions we have with the places we live in or frequently visit reveal a lot about how we act in social situations. However, in order to be able to speak about the relationship we have with our surroundings, it is important to know the difference between “place” and “space.” is fixed and has tangible limits whereas is more liquid and sensitive to change. But perhaps it is also important to think about how culture might have an impact on how individuals value and react to certain places and spaces.
- “A house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs or illusions of stability.” —Gaston Bachelard,
- Is the concept of “home” more linked to the idea of space or place? Is it possible that both are true?
- In his essay entitle “Figures, Doors and Passages,” Robin Evans writes that “the search for privacy, comfort and independence through the agency of architecture” is recent. Nowadays, when we think of our homes, or a part of our homes, we immediately think of something that belongs to us.
- The standard of living arrangements vary from place to place. What is the most common situation in Jakarta? How is your own living arrangement? Do you live alone, with friends, or with your family?
- “If anything is described by an architectural plan, it is the nature of human relationships, since the elements whose trace it records – walls, doors, windows and stairs – are employed first to divide and then selectively to re-unite inhabited space.” —Robin Evans,
How do humans – whether they know each other or not – interact in public spaces? How is it different from the interaction that takes place in private spaces?
- Cafe culture and Co-working establishments. Why do you think these sorts of places are very relevant nowadays?
- The Internet is a shared global, yet intangible space.
- How do you think social media changed the way we perceive distance as well as our social interactions?
- Do you think that is possible for humans to abandon direct social interactions in the future?
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
7—9 pm
Kinokuniya Plaza Senayan
(near the language section)
Jl. Asia Afrika 8
Sogo Plaza Senayan Lt. 5
Jakarta 10270
Please look out for more #WeDiscuss updates on our Facebook page and Twitter account! If you’d like to share your opinions, or if you have friends who’d like to share theirs, sign up via e-mail with the subject title “We Discuss” at ! If you have comments or questions, tweet us .
On October 22, Whiteboard Journal hosted our fourth meeting at Kinokuniya Plaza Senayan. Despite the traffic, a solid group of participants came and shared their opinions on art.
While “art” is an extremely broad word is by no means an easy subject to talk about, the fact that its elements can be found in just about any discipline, it is something that many can relate to.
- There are two ways to define of art: 1.) the institutional definition (as validated by museums, galleries, and individuals who are recognized as experts in the field), and 2.) the personal definition (what is relatable to each person).
- Works of art are often seen as statements (i.e. objects that communicate a particular message).
- Context is extremely important in creating, understanding, and appreciating art. It is what makes something significant and meaningful within a certain era or society.
- The problem in Indonesia is that there is a tendency to create without putting too much attention to the local context.
- The creative process – that is, the process of making a piece of art – requires more than the artist’s skills, as it also entails the need to nurture a particular sensitivity to one’s surroundings.
- At this point, honesty is more important than originality. Artists ought to be open about what inspires them and influences their work.
- According to the personal definition of art, it comes down to being honest to oneself instead of pleasing others (although with whom one intends to share the artwork with is also an important factor).
- Art is a person’s attempt to turn his or her feelings into something tangible.
- The purpose of an artwork changes the process.
- Representative vs. non-representative art
- In some cases, it might be a good idea to avoid overanalyzing art since not all works of art contain a hidden meaning.
- Art does not always have to be aesthetically pleasing. It is more about how it affects people emotionally.
- In the end, “Art is not supposed to make you think, it’s supposed to make you feel.”
We would like to thank those who came and contributed to the fourth We Discuss meeting. We hope to see you again in future discussions. Look out for announcements about next month’s discussion on on our website, Facebook page, as well as our Twitter and Instagram account!
Art intersects with so many different disciplines that we often forget to talk about art in relation to itself. How would we begin a conversation that is dedicated to art alone? Below is a list of recommended articles, essays, and novels that you might want to check out before We Discuss #4.
The Exhibition-Machine: The Education Potential of an Exhibition by Mitha Budhyarto
“The kind of leaning that takes place in an exhibition is one that – despite lacking the formality and strict regulations of institutional education – mobilizes new ways of thinking and doing. Exhibitions educate us when it ignites lines of inquiries that we never expected before, when it propels us into thinking and feeling in ways we never have. Certainly not only about art practices, but also about the way we live our lives.”
Can exhibitions be an effective alternative learning platform? In what way can the “new ways of thinking and doing” be developed? Is there one kind of exhibition that is better than others?
The Great Swindle by Roger Scrouton
“Art must give offence, stepping out armed against the bourgeois taste for the conforming and the comfortable, which are simply other names for kitsch and cliché. The result of this is that offence itself becomes a cliché.”
What is the role – if there is one – of art?
Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag
“Interpretation does not, of course, always prevail. In fact, a great deal of today’s art may be understood as motivated by a flight from interpretation. To avoid interpretation, art may become parody. Or it may become abstract. Or it may become (‘merely’) decorative. Or it may become non-art.
The flight from interpretation seems particularly a feature of modern painting. Abstract painting is the attempt to have, in the ordinary sense, no content; there can be no interpretation. Pop Art works by the opposite means to the same result; using a content so blatant, so ‘what it is,’ it, too, ends by being uninterpretable.”
In Sontag’s opinion, the act of interpretation defeats the purpose of art because it emphasizes art’s content instead of the work of art itself.
The surrealist artist, Rene Magritte, thought that “questions like: ‘what does this picture mean, what does it represent?’ are only possible if one is incapable of seeing a picture .”
Do you agree with Sontag and Magritte’s view on interpretation?
“…to be an artist, in his view, was above all to be someone . Someone who submitted himself to mysterious, unpredictable messages, that you would be led, for want of a better word and in the absence of any religious belief, to describe as , messages which nonetheless commanded you in an imperious and categorical manner, without leaving the slightest possibility of escape—expect by losing any notion of integrity and self-respect.”
What makes an artist, an artist? Does one have to have specific qualities in order to be considered an “artist”?
“…we need art because we are so forgetful. We are creatures of the body as well as of the mind, and so require art to stir our languid imaginations and motivate us in ways that mere philosophical expositions cannot. Many of our most important ideas get flattened and overlooked in everyday life, their truth rubbed off through casual use. We know intellectually that we should be kind and forgiving and empathetic, but such adjectives have a tendency to lose all their meaning until we meet with a work of art that grabs us through our senses and won’t let us go until we have properly remembered why these qualities matter and how badly society needs them for its balance and its sanity.”
Does this mean that good art have to shock us, that it must, as de Botton claims, “grab us through our senses”?
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
7—9 pm
Kinokuniya Plaza Senayan
(near the language section)
Jl. Asia Afrika 8
Sogo Plaza Senayan Lt. 5
Jakarta 10270
Look out for updates on our Facebook page and Twitter account! If you’d like to share your opinions, or if you have friends who’d like to share theirs, please sign up via e-mail with the subject title “We Discuss” at ! If you have comments or questions, tweet us .
It is already the second week of October! Which means that our next discussion session is coming up pretty soon. In our previous gathering, we talked about fashion and its relation to art. This month, we are going to focus exclusively on the broad topic of…
What is art? But perhaps a more important question is not to know art is, but we perceive it. How do we make sense of artistic objects? Do we see them as things that are beautiful, or do we care more about what sort of ideas and emotions they could possibly stand for? The discussion will be divided into three sections, starting with the many ways in which art can be defined.
- According to the ed.), the first definition of is: “skill as the result of knowledge and practice.”
- In the , however, the word first and foremost means: “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”
- While both definitions include the word “skill,” the latter emphasizes on the creative aspect of it, along with notions of beauty and emotions.
- Nowadays, however, anything that is beautiful can be called art, as if it is an excuse for things that cannot be explained or categorized.
- But if art is so diverse, and so difficult to explain in one way, how do we identify “artists”?
- Form is the tangible component of art, and it is therefore the thing that initially draws us to any work of art.
- But can form alone our attention and interest in a particular object of art?
- Is it possible for one form of art to be more “superior” than others (such as the classic example of paintings over photographs)?
- The assumption is that art has a message, that it is supposed to mean something.
-The Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk, explores the notion of the message embodied in visible symbols (letters, etc.) in a clever essay entitled, “Meaning.” The narrator is the representation of meaning, which in this case is the text, and it laments over how its essence (i.e. its meaning) is not always grasped. The following line expresses that frustration: “You see, the only reason I’m here is to mean something. But you look at me as if I’m just an object. Yes, I know – I do have a body. But my body is only here to help my meaning flap its wings and take flight.”
- But if art representation, one would have to it in order to uncover it. And to interpret, one has to think that within something, there is always something else.
- However, Susan Sontag notes in her essay “Against Interpretation” that interpretation is “based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content,” and therefore “violates art.”
-This goes hand in hand with René Magritte’s disapproval of interpretation: “Questions like: ‘what does this picture mean, what does it represent?’ are only possible if one is incapable of seeing a picture .”
- Should a work of art be appreciated for what it or for what it ?
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
7—9 pm
Kinokuniya Plaza Senayan
(near the language section)
Jl. Asia Afrika 8
Sogo Plaza Senayan Lt. 5
Jakarta 10270
Please look out for more #WeDiscuss updates on our Facebook page and Twitter account! If you’d like to share your opinions, or if you have friends who’d like to share theirs, sign up via e-mail with the subject title “We Discuss” at ! If you have comments or questions, tweet us .
