LEARNING FROM LAIR

In April 2022 the Indonesian band Lair came to visit me in Oslo as part of their World Terracotta Tour that later ended up at Documenta 15 in Kassel. The band plays on clay instruments made from rooftiles, vessels and ceramic flutes and is part of the artist collective Jatiwangi Art Factory based in West Java in Indonesia.

The collective practice and the holistic way they work and play together through clay and the complex landscape they are part of, is a great inspiration in my work. "Tanah" is an essential element for Jatiwangi people as material, ideas and way of life. Tanah can be translated into soil, earth, clay, land, etc.

In Lair´s visit in Oslo we had two public talks and two concerts and a lot of conversations and jam sessions.

Established in 2005, Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF) is a community that embraces contemporary arts and cultural practices as part of the local life discourse in a rural area. Their manifold activities, always involving the local public, include a video festival, a music festival, a residency program, a discussion series, and a TV and radio station.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, its clay industry made Jatiwangi the biggest roof-tile producing region in Southeast Asia. A hundred years later, in 2005, using the same clay, JaF encouraged the people of Jatiwangi to create a collective awareness and identity for their region through arts and cultural activity. In doing so, JaF tries to cultivate clay with more dignity and to raise the collective happiness of the community.

The project Kota Terakota thus marks the beginning of a new clay culture for Jatiwangi, remodelling the city based on its people’s desires and their collective agreement. In this sense, Kota Terakota speaks to “terra” not only as a material, but also as land, territory, or idea. (Documenta 15 website)