ARENA

ARENA

Jakarta, a city that covers an area of 661 square kilometers with 11.5 million inhabitants, continues to develop rapidly as a very crowded urban city. Like other urban cities, Jakarta also suffers from the loss of its social functions, which in this case is about the loss of the potentials of its citizens as social creatures. This happens due to various but interconnecting reasons, as well as to other factors such as the economic and political conditions. The city’s spatial development has been focusing more on the economical and physical aspects rather than on the social or individual aspects. The individuals in the city’s structure are seen more as the object of the system. With all the flaws in the urban system, individuals in the society are currently in a battlefield to fight for space, both the economic and the physical space. Everything has been set aside to gain economic growth, without adequate attention toward the cultural aspects. This leads to the lack of public and cultural spaces where the society can identify themselves as social creatures, instead of as machines or alienated human beings. It is a difficult thing for us to secure a certain space that can serve as the place to mediate cultural discourses. All aspects of urban life have been dominated by the industrial, commercial spaces, and obviously by authority-dominated spaces. Jakarta Biennale 2009 (JB 09), as an extensive celebration of art, will serve as an attempt to turn art into a reform strategy, engaging the urban subjects, enabling the creative, reflective, and critical ideas to give rise to new spaces that can be more inspiring, participative, and tolerant.