lumbung[dot]space: coming soon in June 2021
The practice of “lumbung"—which literally translates to "rice barn"—points to a varied and long tradition in rural Indonesia, which has been absorbed in different ways into contemporary society. Instead of a thematic interlacing, documenta fifteen attempts to translate lumbung’s history and rich cosmology into mechanisms and structures of common governing.
The process of building a lumbung network among different communities in what is dubbed lumbung inter-lokal started with the fourteen of us: we are collectives, organizations, and institutions from around the world who together are developing the documenta fifteen lumbung. This network will enable each of us to contribute and receive a wide range of resources—such as time, space, money, knowledge, care, and art. As part of documenta fifteen, over the next year and a half, all of us will experiment artistically and economically both with creating lumbung and with each of our local ecosystems. These experiments will be articulated in various ways in Kassel. Since 2020, we have been regularly meeting in assemblies to explore and discuss how to work together for documenta fifteen and beyond.
The lumbung inter-lokal spans a wide diversity of practices that are lumbung in spirit: they are locally anchored and focus on solidarity and generosity in responding to the necessities of local contexts while simultaneously considering and working to support their sustainability and re-generativity. Because the struggle to simply survive exists everywhere and that different places around the world face specific challenges, we are working to establish a digital environment. We envision lumbung[dot]space as a living room where the lumbung community can connect, support, and learn from each other while working out how to do these things digitally. While we are aware that building the lumbung is about the process of learning together, we also see this digital environment as an important publishing tool where the harvest produced during the process of building can be stored and shared with others.
These are the very open questions we have set out to explore together. Alongside the process of documenta fifteen, we will establish a digital lumbung environment that will contribute to finding ways of sustaining the lumbung network beyond the 100 days of the Kassel exhibition. The fourteen of us will start this process in the living room that will be lumbung[dot]space, where we will later welcome others from other lumbung galaxy’s to join us :)
By June 2021, a prototype of lumbung[dot]space will be launched and tested by the lumbung community. Based on an evaluation of the prototype, changes will be implemented from September 2021 toward creating a more comfortable and fully functioning digital environment.