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Jakarta Biennale 2021
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| VIDEO 视频(Instagram) |
The inelegant urban space of the highway interchange takes up an inordinate amount of energy and resources in our daily lives. It is a tool of transport to move goods and people to their destinations. It is not usually a space for contemplation, unless immobile on it during a traffic jam. It exists as a large sculptural mass in our midst that occupies physical, visual and mental space. Historically, public resources were allocated towards building large symbolic structures like pyramids, temples, or (Great) walls. Nowadays, modern society builds roads.
Fully-Directional Hybrid-Turbine Multi-level Cloverstack considers our relationship to that transactional and transitory space of the highway interchange. The shape and path of the Cikunir-2 toll plaza interchange in the south of Jakarta City is rendered into a colorful two-dimensional graphic and painted onto a public plaza. The scale and materiality of the roadway junction is transformed from a voluminous concrete mass to a scaled-down and flattened jumble of routes. The work is an attempt to gain new perspectives on the paths we carve through public space and urban infrastructure. Fully-Directional Hybrid-Turbine Multi-level Cloverstack explores interchanges as expressions of in-between-ness; a space of (missed) connection and crossed paths.
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 Fully-Directional Hybrid-Turbine Multi-level Cloverstack installation detail |
In my mind, Jakarta is a buzzing, intricate, all-hours capitol city. Because the pandemic did not allow for a site visit, I explored Jakarta through street view images on Google Maps. The maps not only traced the roadways, but also offered many glimpses of street life, from tiny corner shops, to motorbikes zipping through intersections, and traffic on multi-level toll roads. Jakarta’s ring road was a source of endless fascination for its similarity to Beijing’s Ring Roads and for the images of people in their cars bumper to bumper on the highway, their visages forever frozen in that particular “decisive moment.”
Fully-Directional Hybrid-Turbine Multi-level Cloverstack digests of one aspect of public infrastructure and scales it down to a human-sized experience. The lines are reminiscent of a labyrinth and may be used to guide a walking meditation or to determine the route of an anticipated journey.
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