Tickets are available via eventbrite here.
Iswanto Hartono is an Indonesian artist, architect and member of the Jakarta-based artists’ collective ruangrupa.
Working across installation, video, painting, text and site-specific practice, Hartono returns repeatedly to histories that have been suppressed, neglected or consciously forgotten. His work considers how colonialism, political power, race and identity continue to shape the present—and how history is carried through everyday life.
Over two days at the Radical Ecology Studio, Hartono will lead Lumbung-ing: a practical and participatory workshop exploring how people might live, learn and work together differently.
Lumbung is a Bahasa Indonesia word for a communal rice barn: a place where a community gathers and stores its harvest as a shared resource for the future. More than a physical structure, lumbung describes a collective practice grounded in mutual support, shared resources, assembly and long-term relationships.
The approach emerged from everyday social practices across Indonesia and has been developed by ruangrupa and Gudskul as a way of building cultural ecosystems capable of resisting competition, extraction and precarity. It became the organising principle of documenta fifteen in Kassel in 2022, for which ruangrupa served as Artistic Direction.
Lumbung is not offered as a perfect model or universal solution. It is slow and situated work: a continuing process of labour, experimentation, error, love and humour.
It begins with deceptively simple questions: How do we live and work together? What can we share? How might a group become part of a wider ecosystem rather than attempting to stand alone?
Designed for artists, organisers, cultural workers, educators, activists and anyone interested in collective practice, the workshop will combine conversation, mapping, peer learning, reading, cooking and collective reflection. Participants will explore the values, processes, resources and speculative imagination through which a collective might take form.
PROGRAMME
SATURDAY 3 OCTOBER
DAY 1: HOW WE DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY
10.30–11am Arrival and introductions
11am–1pm Tanya Memberi, Tak Harap Kembali / To Give Without Expecting in Return
An introduction to ruangrupa’s journey: from supporting progressive artistic practices through exhibitions, festivals, art laboratories, workshops, research and publishing to the development of lumbung as a collective practice.
1–2pm Break
2–4pm Pasar Ilmu / Knowledge Market
An experimental process of co-learning and situated knowledge exchange developed by Gudskul. Participants will work with the knowledge, skills, experiences and relationships already present within thegroup.
4.30–9pm Speculative Collective Kitchen, Film Screening and Hangout
The kitchen becomes a collective imaginary:a place for cooking, performance, shared labour, informal exchange and thinking together. The Collective Kitchen will take place downstairs at Luna’s Bakehouse. At the same time, the complete History – Memory – Commemoration trilogy will play back-to-back in the studio from 4.30–8pm. Workshop participants may move between the two spaces.
SUNDAY 4 OCTOBER
DAY 2: ECOSYSTEM
10.30am Doors open
11am–1pm Siasat 1 and Siasat 2
A collective reading workshop drawing on ruangrupa’s publications Siasat 1, published in 2011, and Siasat 2, published in 2025.
1–2pm Harvesting
Harvesting is a form of collective reflection and writing that gathers what has emerged through conversation, sensory experience and different media. Rather than bringing the process to a close, it creates material for continued learning and future use.
2–3pm Hangout
PARALLEL FILM PROGRAMME
Lumbung-ing takes place alongside History –Memory – Commemoration, a free public programme of films by Mirwan Andan, Hansvan Houwelingen and Iswanto Hartono.
Filmed across Java, Aceh and Sulawesi, the trilogy examines how histories of colonialism, political violence and struggles for independence are remembered, transmitted and contested.
The complete trilogy will screen continuously for approximately three hours and 20 minutes, with the films playing back-to-back. It will be presented in full on Friday and repeated in full on Saturday, allowing audiences to choose which evening to attend.
On Saturday, the films will screen in the Radical Ecology Studio while the Speculative Collective Kitchen takes place downstairs. Workshop participants may move between the two spaces.
The screenings are free and open to everyone. A workshop ticket is not required. See the separate History – Memory– Commemoration programme page for full details.
ABOUT ISWANTO HARTONO
Iswanto Hartono is an Indonesian artist with a background in architecture. Since the late 1990s, his work has addressed history and memory, colonialism and postcoloniality, globalisation, geopolitical power, race and identity.
Hartono is a member of ruangrupa, the Jakarta-based artists’ collective founded in 2000. Together with ruangrupa, he was part of the Artistic Direction of documenta fifteen in Kassel in 2022. He is also part of Gudskul, a collective educational platform and ecosystem founded by ruangrupa, Serrum and Grafis Huru-Hara.
TICKETS AND ACCESS
Workshop tickets: £120
A limited number of bursaries are available. To be considered for a bursary, please email ashish@radicalecology.earth by 13 September 2026, briefly outlining your interest in the workshop and your need for support.
Participants are asked to arrange their own travel and accommodation independently.