设计行动主义 - 麻省理工学院人工智能研究专业

设计行动主义
Indonesian Village
Alexandra Crosby

介绍
Indonesia is home to a diverse range of rich design practices that
have been invented, altered, and remixed over centuries of trade
and colonization. Many of these practices combine a sense of ur-
gency around environmental crises with very local forms of com-
munity organizing and alternative economies. Although most
design activists in Indonesia are dealing with globally significant
问题 (例如, climate crises, food security, and migration), 有
little awareness or understanding of their work outside Asia. 这
aim of this article is to bring some of these practices and projects
into broader discussions about design activism.

This article presents a complex case of design activism
currently occurring in and around the village of Kandangan, 在一个
agricultural area of Central Java. Kandangan is the location of two
组织, Magno and Spedagi, as well as a cluster of other
design initiatives directly and indirectly linked to these two: Pasar
Papringan (a local makers market); Omah Tani, Omah Kelingan,
and Yudhi Homestay (eco-tourism initiatives); 和国际-
tional Conference on Village Revitalization (a practice-led research
collaboration between Indonesian and Japanese designers).

Magno is a locally owned eco-design business, 与约
30 employees manufacturing wooden radios, toys, 和文具
items for chic retail outlets in Indonesia’s cities and for global
wholesalers. As a model of socially responsible product design,
Magno develops the skill capacity in the community through a
“New Craft” methodology, in which a modern manufacturing
approach is applied to the handcrafting of products. Items are
designed with a step-by-step assembly in mind so that a person
with no prior craft experience from the village can quickly be
trained to make products of a standard form and quality.1 In an
effort toward resource sustainability, the company regenerates its
wood supplies through a local reforestation program. The designs
have been awarded a suite of global design awards, and the busi-
ness is highly successful, allowing its owners to redirect profits
into other forms of design activism.

The full Magno product range can be
viewed at http://www.magno-design.com
(accessed October 1, 2017).

https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00549

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

See Magno’s list of awards here: http://
www.magno-design.com/?id=awards
(accessed October 1, 2017).

3 Aaris Sherin, Sustainable Thinking:
Ethical Approaches to Design and
Design Management (伦敦: Fairchild
图书, 2013).
Brent Adam Luvaas, DIY Style: Fashion,
Music and Global Digital Cultures
(牛津: 伯格, 2012), 45.
The field work for this article relates to
a wider research project—the exchange
https://indoaustdesignfutures.org/—
to map emergent design practices in
Indonesia and to bring together
Indonesian and Australian designers,
design researchers, and design educators
to work on sustainable futures by rethink-
ing the way we design food production,
住房, 运输, and cities—all of
which reveal urgent problems that affect
the entire region of Southeast Asia.
6 Decolonization is an ongoing process of
undoing rather than a set historical
时期. 看, 例如, Arjun Appadurai,
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions
of Globalization (明尼阿波利斯: 大学
of Minnesota Press, 1996); 爱德华
Said, Orientalism (纽约: 万神殿,
1995); and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason
(Cambridge MA: 哈佛大学
按, 1999). To help combat the residual
effects of colonialism on cultures,
including design cultures, 非殖民化
aims to clear spaces in academia and in
general discourse for previously unheard
voices. For decolonization in design, 看
the special issue titled “Decolonizing
Design” of Design and Culture 10,
不. 1 (2018); Madina Tlostanova, “On
Decolonizing Design,” Design Philosophy
文件 15, 不. 1 (2017): 51–61; 和
阿图罗·埃斯科巴, 设计用于
多元宇宙: 彻底的相互依存,
自治, 以及制作
Worlds (达勒姆, NC: 杜克大学
按, 2018).

7 Grace Lees-Maffei and Kjetil Fallan,

“Real Imagined Communities: 国家的
Narratives and the Globalization of
Design History,” 设计问题 32, 不. 1
(冬天 2016): 18, 土井:10.1162/DESI.

One of these efforts is Spedagi, a grass roots, not-for-profit
community group that focuses on the redesign of village life
toward sustainability and that uses bamboo bicycles as its symbol.
Spedagi is a shortened form of Sepeda (bicycle) and Pagi (早晨),
referring to the practice of cycling in the early morning to com-
mute, shop at the market, or just to be active in the village streets
before the heat of the day.

Magno and Spedagi were founded by Singgih Kartono
and Tri Wahyuni, graduates of Indonesia’s oldest design school,
Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). Kartono is a talented and
charismatic designer who speaks English fluently and has received
significant attention as a product designer, both in Indonesia and
globally.2 He is one of the case studies presented in the survey
书, Sustainable Thinking: Ethical Approaches to Design and Design
Management.3 Although Kartono’s achievements are impressive and
重要的, understanding design activism needs to be not only
about a designer’s stories, but also about learning to read places
and relationships. This article focuses less on Kartono as a designer
and more on the relationship between design activism in Kandan-
gan and global discourses of activism and sustainability. This rela-
tionship is complicated by non-local notions of entrepreneurship
that tend to equate design activism with a single designer’s efforts
to lead social change, and also by the way neoliberalism is remixed
as “DIY capitalism” in Indonesia.4

In this spirit, my examples are not extensive or far-reaching.
相当, I focus on a single place-based example from ethnographic
fieldwork and practice-based design projects. I have visited Kan-
dangan both as a guest and as a collaborator, helping to design
educational programs, exhibitions, and exchanges to engender
conversations between Australian and Indonesian designers,
design academics, and design students.5 I also have conducted
semi-structured interviews with a range of Kandangan designers
and residents, as well as with Australian designers who have
worked with them.

The activist practices in Kandangan are important for the
obvious reason that they empower local people challenged by pov-
erty and limited political agency to share knowledge and to create
their own futures. But these practices also are important because
they converse with global design culture in a way that contributes
to its decolonization while creating the necessary language for col-
laboration.6 Analysis of this design work, as well as the design
work itself, produces a “more extensive coverage of design, vari-
ously defined, 世界各地, informed by the recognition of
the effect of colonialism and post-colonialism alike.”7

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

8 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction:

An Ethnography of Global Connection
(普林斯顿大学, 新泽西州: 普林斯顿大学
按, 2005), 57.

9 盖·朱利尔, “从设计文化到

设计行动主义,” Design and Culture 5,
不. 2 (2013):
215–36. doi.org/10.2752/1754708
13X13638640370814.

10 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Eth-
nography of Global Connection (普林斯顿大学
新泽西州: 普林斯顿大学出版社, 2005), 3.

11 Harun Kaygan and Guy Julier, “Global

Design Activism Survey,” Design and Cul-
真实 5, 不. 2 (2013): 237–52; Fiona Hack-
ney, “Quiet Activism and the New
Amateur: The Power of Home and Hobby
Crafts,” Design and Culture 5, 不. 2 (七月
1, 2013): 169–93; 埃齐奥·曼齐尼, “制作
Things Happen: Social Innovation and
设计,” 设计问题 30, 不. 1 (冬天
2014): 57–66; Alastair Fuad-Luke, 设计
Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a
Sustainable World (Earthscan, 2009);
Thomas Markussen, “The Disruptive
Aesthetics of Design Activism: Enacting
Design Between Art and Politics,“ 设计
问题 29, 不. 1 (冬天 2013): 38–50;
卡尔·迪萨尔沃, Adversarial Design (这
与新闻界, 2012).

12 For art and design, 看, 例如, Edwin
Jurriëns, “Video Art Communities in
印度尼西亚,” in Performing Contemporary
印度尼西亚: Celebrating Identity, 骗局-
structing Community, 编辑. Barbara Hatley
(Lieden: Brill, 2015), 98–118. For film and
文化, 看, 例如, Katinka van Heeren,
Contemporary Indonesian Film; Spirits
of Reform and Ghosts from the Past
(Leiden: Brill, 2012); and Ariel Heryanto,
编辑. Popular Culture in Indonesia: Fluid
Identities in Post-Authoritarian Politics
(London and New York: 劳特利奇, 2008).
For media studies, 看, 例如, Merlyna Lim,
“Lost in Transition? The Internet and
reformasi in Indonesia,” Reformatting
政治: Information Technology and
Global Civil Society (纽约: 溃败-
壁架, 2006): 85–106; Krishna Sen and
David Hill, 编辑。, Politics and the Media in
Twenty-First Century Indonesia: 十年
民主的 (London and New York:
劳特利奇, 2010); and Ferdiansyah Tha-
jib, Nuraini Juliastuti Andrew Lowen-
thal, and Alexandra Crosby, Videochronic:
Video Activism and Video Distribution
in Indonesia (悉尼, 澳大利亚: Engage-
媒体, 2009).

This article is structured in two parts. In the first part, 我
provide context to the emergence of design activism in Indonesia
and Central Java. Drawing on the work of Anna Tsing, I introduce
the idea of reading such activism in terms of “scale-making
项目,” which helps to deepen the context within which de-
sign practices are understood and, as a secondary result, to resist
the temptation to categorize design activism only according to
national boundaries.8

In the second part, I detail the practices at work in the
design activism clusters at Kandangan, leaning on Guy Julier’s
work to explain the “to-ing and fro-ing” between neoliberalism
and activist design. Julier proposes “four possible conceptual tac-
tics for the activist designer that are also to be found in particular
qualities in the mainstream design culture and economy.”9 The
four tactics are identified below:

• Intensification, which describes a density of designerly

干涉;

• Territorialization, which describes the scale at which
responsibility and impact is conceived;
• Temporality, which describes the way that speed,
slowness, 进步, and incompletion are dealt with; 和
• Co-articulation, which describes the combinations of
concerns and practices in a way that strengthens both.

I use these four themes as a starting point for thinking about what
design activism does in Kandangan, paying attention to the semi-
otics (meanings inherited and challenged), 规模 (dynamic and rela-
的), and speed (determined by local needs and global flows) 的
design interactions. I then consider how design activism relates to
global design culture and examine what is sometimes, impossibly,
thought of as a global movement of design activism. I use Julier’s
categories to take the discussion of design activism in Kandangan
beyond the “designer” and to argue that design activist practices
operate by making both scales and place, and always in “produc-
tive friction” with global design culture.10

Design and Cultural Activism and the Indonesian Context
In conceptualizing design activism in Kandangan, I build on defi-
nitions and descriptions of activism offered by design academics11;
I also examine important work done by scholars of Indonesia to
identify emerging forms of cultural activism in Indonesia in the
fields of art and design, film and popular culture, and media stud-
ies.12 As I have argued elsewhere, cultural activism in Indonesia is
made possible by the way activists redirect and remix the catego-
ries of art, 设计, 文化, 农业, 和商业, inserting
themselves between categories.13 Design activism in Kandangan
operates in this way.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

By presenting the Indonesian context, I do not intend to offer
a single story of design activism at a national scale in Indonesia.
The grand narratives of nationhood have been thoroughly untan-
gled by scholars of Indonesia and other modern nations, rendering
such generalizations theoretically impossible. 实际上, 印度尼西亚
provided Anderson a very lucid example of the way multiple cul-
tural identities are manipulated by the state to form “imagined
communities.”14 In addition, in an argument that has special
significance for design, Appardurai reminds us that modernity—
although often historicized as a single narrative—is in fact “multi-
ple modernities,” consisting of different stories in different places.15
Design plays a role in forming and communicating national iden-
tity in Indonesia, and the relationship of local design practices to
nationhood works at multiple scales. “Nations are not isolated enti-
领带; they engage in multidirectional dialogues with neighbors,
朋友们, influencers, trading partners, and enemies.”16 A detailed
examination of these dialogues and multiplicities is beyond the
scope of this article; 笔记, 然而, the important contextual point
that outsiders, including myself and many readers of this article,
might engage with the practices discussed here as “Indonesian,”
even though the designers themselves do not.

This work begins not with the nation but at the scale of a
small village, Kandangan, which like most villages in Java is facing
immense problems as waves of its employable residents move
to work in factories in the big cities, at large-scale agriculture
projects in the outer islands, or as domestic workers further afield.
尽管如此, the concerns and practices discussed in this article
are not limited to “rural,” “village,” or “non-urban” activism. 作为
Willis suggests, the urban is everywhere.17 Activist design
responses to urbanization in Indonesia are many. Design activism
includes using drones in the counter-mapping of forests in West
Kalimantan to support indigenous and local land claims, 也
producing festivals that reclaim local water sources in Salatiga.18
Although rooted in the places where they happen, these forms of
activism are about the flows of resources and power across and
between the urban and the rural. They produce designs (maps and
故事) that generate different ways of looking at the world. 在这个
方式, the activism itself—like capitalist projects, such as trans-
national logging companies or bottled water brands—is a scale-
making project.

“Scales” can be understood geographically, but also “arise
from the relationships that inform particular projects, 场景, 或者
events… Project scales jostle and contest each other. Because rela-
tionships are encounters across difference, they have a quality of
indeterminacy.”19 Tsing refers to the making of scale as a creative
过程: “Scale is the spatial dimensionality necessary for a partic-
ular kind of view, whether up close or from a distance, 微观的

13 Alexandra Crosby, “Relocating Kampung,
Rethinking Community Salatiga’s ‘Festival
Mata Air,’” in Performing Contemporary
印度尼西亚, 编辑. Barbara Hatley (Lieden:
Brill, 2015), 67–83.

14 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communi-

领带: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism (纽约: Verso, 1983).

15 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large:
Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(明尼阿波利斯, 明尼苏达州: University of Minne-
sota Press, 1996), 2.

16 Lees-Maffei and Fallan, “Real Imagined

Communities,” 12.

17 Anne-Marie Willis, “From Peri-Urban to
Unknown Territory,” Design Philosophy
文件 5, 不. 2 (2007): 83.

18 See Irendra Radjawali and Oliver Pye,

“Counter-Mapping Land Grabs with Com-
munity Drones in Indonesia,” (2015); 和
Cindy Lin and Andrew Moon, “Negotiat-
ing Time: Design as Historical Practice,”
PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary
International Studies 13, 不. 2 (2016):
1–8. https://doi.org/10.5130/portal.
v13i2.5030 (accessed October 1, 2018).
19 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, “On Nonscal-

能力: The Living World Is Not Amenable
to Precision-Nested Scales,” Common
知识 18, 不. 3 (2012): 509–10.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

or planetary.”20 She argues that scale—for instance, globalism and
regionalism—is brought into being through a kind of conjuring
that allows people to see the world in different ways. Projects are
“scale-making” when they “make us imagine locality, or the space
of regions or nations, in order to see their success.”21 I consider the
various forms of design activism in Kandangan as scale-making
项目, generating objects, 图片, and systems that are located in
the village but that challenge preconceptions of what the village
means and how it relates to global design.

Intensification: Remixing Bamboo
Julier relates the concept of intensification to the way that de-
signers orient life in various directions by providing materiality
through design. “The objects of design culture and design activism
are affective.”22 In this section, I discuss the use of bamboo by
designers in Kandangan as a materialization of localized de-
sign and production. The Spedagi bicycle gives form to design
activism in a number of ways (见图 1). 第一的, with the abun-
dance of bamboo as a material in Central Java, Spedagi provides
an opportunity to manufacture bicycle frames from local materials.
This opportunity has opened up discussions about the resources
required for the production and consumption of designed ob-
项目. The frames of Spedagi bicycles are made from Giant Bamboo
(Dendrocalamus asper) and used in a design inspired by the “bilah-
tangkup” construction (IE。, slates that hold each other) of the bam-
boo rafters in a traditional Javanese roof truss. This bamboo
assemblage is a rich example of intensification. The bicycle remixes
aspects of local and global design into a material form that both is
functional and makes a statement.

数字 1
Spedagi Bamboo bicycle. Photo by Singgih
Susilo Kartono.

20 Tsing, Friction, 58.
21
22 Julier, “From Design Culture to Design

同上。, 57.

Activism,” 232.

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

As another form of design activism, the Spedagi bicycle
also functions as a complex symbol for grass roots sustainability—
one that works on many levels, and sometimes with contradictions.
Bamboo as a material is cheap, fast growing, 可再生, and bio-
degradeble, and it requires few resources to produce; 然而, 它
还 (and perhaps because of these properties) carries class connota-
tions in Indonesia, specifically relating to life outside urban centers.
因此, in global design culture, bamboo is associated with sustain-
ability and ecodesign (think light, airy homewares, linens, 和
allergen-free baby products), but in Indonesia it also is associated
with poverty, scarcity, and the hardship of village life. Bamboo sym-
bolizes a position of marginality to the city, to development, 并
elite notions of culture, including design culture.23

These associations play out in many designed objects, 和
housing being perhaps the most obvious. 现代的, urban life in
Java means living in multi-story concrete buildings (gedongan),
housing estates (perumahan) 或者, in the case of Jakarta, super block
apartments. As Abidin Kusno writes, the designs of the Jakarta
superblock can be read as part of a strategy to hide the growing
conflicts between circuits of poverty and luxury consumption,
unemployment and the decline of state authority, evictions and
城市暴力, environmental degradation and the privatization
of public resources. Such conflicts are hidden behind “a powerful
image of a new kind of urban form in the city.”24 Architectural
design strategies intensify the idea of the urban and relegate the
village and certain design materials (such as bamboo) to the mar-
杜松子酒, as undeveloped, traditional, 和当地的.

In Kandangan, traditional bamboo houses, while cheap and
可持续的, are often considered an inferior alternative to cement
block houses, in the same way that a bamboo basket that takes
three hours to weave and deteriorates after a few months is often
considered inferior to a plastic one. These kinds of associations are
largely invisible in global design culture, where labor is hidden
and markets are supposedly inexhaustable. In using bamboo in a
locally grounded design form that is contemporary, globally
appealing, and stylish, the Spedagi bicycle both uses and disrupts
these associations. 实际上, only by looking closely at the delicate
inner grain and warm golden color of the highly polished and
coated composite material from which the frame has been con-
structed can viewers recognize the bamboo (见图 2). 这
shape of the frame is also a disguise (and a key functional innova-
的) because it does away with the familiar ribs of a bamboo stem.
It casts off expected notions of Indonesian bamboo as “rustic.”

23 Bamboo has been emerging in some
large-scale architectural projects in
印度尼西亚 (例如, Green School) 和
also is being reconsidered in complex
ways by some Indonesian designers.
(See Jamaludin’s study of the meaning
produced by the shape and form of
traditional bamboo rice containers
in Sundanese culture: Jamaludin.
Jamaludin, “The Aesthetics of
Sundanese Traditional Design, 案件
学习: Rice Containers Design,”
Journal of Visual Art and Design 4,
不. 1 (2013): 35–41.

24 Abidin Kusno, “Back to the City:

A Note on Urban Architecture in the
New Indonesia,” Arts, Popular Culture
and Social Change in the New Indonesia
Seminar Proceedings of Conference held
at the Centre for Southeast Asian
研究, University of British Columbia
(卷. 24. 2006), 59–94.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

数字 2
Pringrolas 0.1. Photo by Singgih Susilo
Kartono.

The use of local bamboo to make bicycles in Kandangan
is an example of an everyday designed object that intensifies
the meaning and affect of a material (bamboo) and also performs
that meaning in the public realm. Spedagi released a full range of
bicycles for sale in 2017. Bicycles are hand-numbered by each lim-
ited edition, and designs are revised iteratively and improved
quickly with each small-run edition production. As evidenced by
the marketing of the bicycle, the project asks us to reimagine the
village by connecting to global design culture. The website states
that the “Spedagi Bamboo Bike is ‘magnet’ and icon, as well as the
隐喻, of Village Revitalization itself: It was born from some-
thing that has been forgotten.”25

Territorialization: Revitalizing the Village as a Scale-Making
项目
To consider the scale at which responsibility is conceived by the
designers who package Spedagi’s village revitalization process as a
global exchange process, I now focus on the ways that design activ-
ism both territorializes and is territorialized in Kandangan.

Spedagi’s activism is first and foremost a response to ur-
banization materialized as a redesign of village life. The bamboo
bicycles are part of this project. The narrative is logical: Develop
the local economy, create local opportunities, redesign village life,
and people will stay. When people stay, they will grow and share
knowledge about the local environment, they will invest energy

25 https://www.spedagi.com/ (访问过

十月 1, 2017).

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

and money into local initiatives, they will create a place worth liv-
ing in, and they will not leave, will not urbanize. But the reality of
these goals is much more complex, and for city dwellers (喜欢
myself and 54 percent of Indonesians whose lives are city-based26),
a “return to the village” movement might feel romantic—but con-
ceptually inaccessible.

然而, if we consider the urban as a process that operates
beyond cities and is in fact a “mobile geography, a figure of desire
and aspiration that exists everywhere,” village revitalization can
be read as a scale-making project. Spedagi helps us to imagine
Kandangan in ways that both reproduce and push back at the
design of the village in Indonesia, used politically over history. 在
the colonial vision, Indonesia’s villages are “idylls of tranquility,
consisting of a homogenous and classless ‘peasantry’ practicing
‘subsistence farming’ while being insulated from the cash econ-
omy.”27 This colonial vision was developed further in Suharto’s
New Order propaganda, which encouraged villagers, as Indo-
nesian citizens, to work together without conflict, guided by
shared values of gotong royong (working together), kekeluargaan
(family spirit), and rukun (harmony). Such a romantic vision of
rural Indonesia remains dominant among many policymakers
and academics, and it also exists in the way national and glo-
bal design discourse frames Indonesian design as a community-
based craft.

The International Conference on Village Revitalization
(ICVR) provides a clear example of the way Spedagi is scale-mak-
英. The conference has been held three times: first in 2014 in Kan-
dangan; second in 2016 in Ato, Yamaguchi, in Japan; and most
recently in 2018, in the village of Ngadimulyo, near Temanggung in
Central Java. The theme of village revitalization is conceived here
as a global concern and articulated with the following goals:

• To share experience and knowledge of village revitaliza-

tion efforts;

• To exchange experiences of village revitalization efforts
among various stakeholders;
• To gather suggestions, 知识, and experience of
village revitalization efforts;
• To build local, 区域性的, national, and international
networks of individuals and related organizations that
support village revitalization; 和
• To promote global sustainable living that starts with
village revitalization.28

What are the local and the global goals in this context? Spedagi
designers use the revitalization of the village as a scale-making
project that reframes not only the village itself, but also its rela-
tionship with other scales: the province, 国家, 地区, and globe.

26 The World Bank Group, “Urban

Population (% 总计).” https://数据.
worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.
TOTL.IN.ZS?locations=ID (访问过
十月 1, 2018).

27 Ben White, “The Myth of the Harmonious

Village,” Inside Indonesia, http://
www.insideindonesia.org/the-myth-of-
the-harmonious-village-2 (访问过
十月 1, 2017).

28 Spedagi, “The 1st International Con-

ference on Village Revitalization (ICVR)
2014” (Kandangan, 2014); http://icvr.
spedagi.org/en/home-2/ (访问过
十月 1, 2018).

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

Spedagi designers align the village with communities outside
Indonesia that share their concerns. They focus on relocalization by
intensifying the local systems of exchange while remaining
outward looking.

Temporality: Making Tempeh and Slowing Down at
Pasar Papringan
同时, design initiatives in Kandangan operate within a tem-
poral tension, where design activism makes a point of slowing
down processes and practices. One example is Pasar Papringan, A
market designed for exchanging locally made products, 食物, cof-
fee, and local farm produce. Pasar Papringan has been in operation
自从 2016, with the unconventional cycle of Wage (the 35-day mar-
ket cycle in the Javanese calendar). Indonesian rupiah are some-
times exchanged, but the primary medium of exchange in the
market is a custom-designed currency, made from bamboo. Orga-
nizers claim that Pasar Papringan is a zero-waste marketplace,
with no plastic bags or take-away food containers.

Of all the initiatives discussed here, Pasar Papringan is most
dependent on the support of the village community and as a result
has had precarious beginnings. The market has relocated several
times and, according to organizers, has presented political chal-
lenges at a local level. One reason is that, despite the land’s having
many shared uses (例如, growing and harvesting food), the actual
title of common land can be very ambiguous in villages in Java. 在
the site of Pasar Papringan, a number of claims to the land
emerged after its profit potential became apparent. A second possi-
ble reason that initial momentum was difficult is in the scale-mak-
ing itself—that is, how Pasar Papringan is branded as a global idea.
As in many international development contexts, people in Java
sometimes are suspicious of projects, or “proyek,” that are per-
ceived as international and that purport to help them but that lack
consultative processes, inclusive decision making or genuine par-
ticipation and long-term vision. For many people, the “proyek” still
carries associations from the New Order of corrupt government
development29; for others, it conveys inauthentic sustainability
efforts using disingenuous international funding arrangements. 在
some places in Java, as in Australia, “appearances of ‘authenticity’”
also are beginning to define what Willis and Fry call the “neoru-
ral”: an agricultural styling, such as a petting zoo in a restaurant, 是
designed and constructed that has little to do with “the actualities
of commercial farming.”30 These suspicions speak to the way that
neoliberalism is playing out in particular ways in Indonesia and
that rub up against local forms of design activism. Activist initia-
tives like Pasar Papringan operate in this context, where commu-
nities are suspicious of top-down development initiatives, 和

29 Edward Aspinall, “A Nation in Fragments:

Patronage and Neoliberalism in Contem-
porary Indonesia,” Critical Asian Studies
45, 不. 1 (2013): 27–54.

30 Anne-Marie Willis, “Urbocentrism,”

Design Philosophy Papers 2, 不. 4 (2004):
211–15, 214.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

farmers might be suspicious of agendas that propose to scale down
农业 (and profit margins) or indeed to local-ize markets. 到
be genuine, such initiatives need to be not only place-based, 但
also open-ended and temporally responsive.

Compounding this complexity are the existing cultures of
local markets, which already operate with their own rules, 社会的
关系, 经济体, and sense of place. In its making of place,
a local market resists design culture while simultaneously dis-
tributing it. A village market is typically unbranded, but Pasar
Papringan, categorized online as a “shopping district,” has 5,000
Instagram followers and is also a tourist destination. In her book,
Markets, Places and Cities, Kirsten Seale refers to this friction as
the difference between making place and placemaking. The making
of place in a local market is emergent, she argues—dense with
“micro-processes, intimate in scale, involving close relationships
between senses, 身体, space and materials.”31 Pasar Papringan,
with its deliberate design and manipulation of place, could be read
as an imposition, signaling the gentrification of village processes
and producing friction between scales of activism. This interpre-
tation presents a series of design challenges for the market’s
organizers, who maintain the agenda of building a movement
that redirects consumption practices and supporting small-scale
village production.

Food is the primary focus of the market—particularly food
that is grown locally and used by designers to revitalize local
knowledge and bring sustainability into everyday practices. 使用
food as a medium to link design and activism is “about a shared
fate, shared resources, shared risks and shared solutions, 创造
公众, nurturing the commons through involved, inclusive and
dialogical communication.”32 A clear example of this link can be
found in the work of designer Fransisca Callista (Siska) to revalue
local food knowledge.33 Tempeh—a daily source of protein in
Java that can be made on a small scale with local ingredients—is
now most often made with industrially grown soybeans. A design
innovation itself, tempeh was discovered accidentally sometime
in the seventeenth century in Java, when the mycelium (Rhizopus
oligosporus or Rhizopus oryzae) came into contact with soybeans
being used to make tofu-making.34 Tempeh can also be made
from other beans, such as benguk [Mucuna pruriens]. Siska became
interested in tempeh when she moved to Kandangan to work on
Pasar Papringan and other Spedagi initiatives. She began map-
ping local food knowledge that was losing visibility in the vil-
lage. As well as discovering that benguk was edible and medicinal,
Siska found that it was being grown by farmers on the edges of
Kandangan as a nitrogen-fixing, living fertilizer for other crops,
like papaya, banana, and cassava. The plant grows by climbing its
way up banana trees or other available trellises.35

31 Kirsten Seale, “What Is a Market?,”
in Markets, Places, 城市 (纽约:
劳特利奇, 2016), 5.

32 Oliver Vodeb, Food Democracy (布里斯托尔:

智力, 2017), 24.

33 Kirsten Bradley, “Tempe as Language:
An Indonesian Village Revitalisation
Mini-project,” PORTAL Journal of
Multidisciplinary International Studies
13, 不. 2 (2016). Siska is currently the
project manager of Pasar Papringan.
Her writing (in Indonesian) is available
at her blog https://fransiscallista.word-
press.com/ (accessed October 1, 2018).

34 Sri Owen and Roger Owen, “Tempeh:

过去, Present and Possible Future of
Fermented Soybean,” in Cured, Smoked,
and Fermented: 诉讼程序
Oxford Symposium on Food, 编辑. Helen
Saberi (伦敦: Prospect Books, 2011),
221–30.

35 Kirsten Bradley, “Making Tempeh as

Village Revitalisation,” Milkwood (blog),
https://www.milkwood.net/2016/07/18/
making-tempeh-village-revitalisation-
tool/ (accessed October 1, 2017).

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

Siska worked with farmers already growing benguk to make
a locally grown, locally produced tempeh to supply the village.
Any excess is sold at Pasar Papringan, wrapped in banana leaves.
The husk and bean skins also can be used as dye for batik, 这是
another local design industry in Kandangan, producing items for
the market.

In terms of temporality, these practices can be read as the
slowing down of design processes to re-establish community
连接. In turn, this slowing down makes visible local
design—human practices that often go unnoticed (such as those
connected to food preparation) and the multiple nonhuman species
involved in design processes. Rather than having set goals or
points of closure, Pasar Papringan works in unconventional
cycles—in open-ended ways that go beyond the materialization
and marketing of design. Siska’s design work, which remaps local
food production with a multispecies approach, is an example of the
kinds of practices that such design activism enables, as well as the
effects it can have on people and ecosystems. Entrepreneurship in
this sense, while circulating globally, can represent commoning,
“motivated by an ethic of care for what nourishes and sustains
people and the people both now and into the future,” generating
genuine innovation and existing in strong contrast to commercial
design exchanges.36

Co-Articulation: Local Brands That Travel
In this last section I discuss design activism in Kandangan as a
co-articulation of different agendas, particularly legible in the
brands of Magno and Spedagi. Magno products present a material-
ized tension between design culture and design activism. As a suc-
cessful business, Magno supports a local community, funds many
of the initiatives described, and circulates ideas about sustaina-
能力. 这样做, it also exploits globally circulating aesthetics of
sustainability. As well as being locally focused, Magno products
are available the world over and are evidence of the facilitation of
the free global flow of capital and goods and the speeding up of
design culture. Magno products don’t linger in Kandangan to be
sold to passersby. 相当, after production they rapidly travel into
the global market, accelerated by the translation and transaction
affordances of digital technologies.

When Kartono and Wahyuni travelled to Australia for
Sydney Design Week, they brought the entire Magno product
line and two bamboo bicycles. The sale of the carefully assembled,
unvarnished items helped fund their trip, but they also brought
concerns for natural resources into homes, offices, galleries, 和
campuses in Australia and challenged the perception of Indonesia
as a source of natural resources and cheap labor, rather than of

36 Gibson-Graham, Julie-Katharine, Jenny
Cameron, and Stephen Healy, Take Back
the Economy: An Ethical Guide for
Transforming our Communities (大学-
sity of Minnesota Press, 2013), 138.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

数字 3
IKoNO++ Magno Wooden Radio. Photo by Aris
Wijayanto; courtesy of Singgih S. Kartono.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

design innovation. The objects themselves privilege craftsman-
ship over efficiency, reminding the user that design can produce
effects that go beyond ease and convenience. As a specific example,
the most well-known Magno radio, the IKoNO, is designed with
no helpful graphics for tuning (见图 3). The idea is that users
get to know their radio by touch and feel, by slowing down, 经过
attending to it, rather than depending on the aid of language. Like
the bamboo bicycle, the Magno wooden radios work as activist
物体, drawing their users into their place and pace of production
and into their material story.

Kartono and Wahyuni also brought with them two Spedagi
bicycles. The bikes also articulate sustainability concerns by mate-
rializing participation; 然而, as vehicles, they work through
their movement in the world—by being mobile objects in the
public realm and by disseminating an “open design” that priori-
tizes innovation over reproduction.37 Powered by the muscles of
its human rider, the scale of the bicycle’s articulation as a material

37 Bas van Abel, Lucas Evers, Roel Klaas-

sen, and Peter Troxler, Open Design Now:
Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive
(阿姆斯特丹: BIS publishers, 2011). 看
http://opendesignnow.org/ (访问过
十月 1, 2018).

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

object within space is determined by each individual user. 如何-
曾经, the idea of Spedagi, and the bicycles themselves, also travel at
多尺度.

While travelling in Australia, these activist objects enabled
collaborations between Indonesian designers and Australian
designer activists. The Spedagi bicycle acted as a catalyst for a
“bike hack” during Sydney Design Week, when Australian design-
ers and bike mechanics experimented with upcycled materials for
constructing bike frames. The bicycles also sparked the interest of
Sydney-based artist and bike activist Gilbert Grace, who connected
Spedagi’s work with the The Kandos School of Cultural Adapta-
tion—an initiative that grew out of the design of an alternative
history and speculative fiction for the small town of Kandos in
regional New South Wales.38

Designers who are actively working with others in their
own contexts can share knowledge in this way. Because of co-artic-
ulated agendas, they are already collaborators, and are already
engaged in small and slow solutions. Activist design objects such
as the Spedagi bicycles act not in smooth, evenly distributed, 或者
symmetrical ways as they move between places; 相当, 他们
are assemblages, “made up of many heterogeneous terms and
which establish liaisons, relations between them… it a symbiosis,
a ‘sympathy.’”39 The experiences of these designers point to a kind
of collaboration with goals deeper than short-term profit motives
and could decolonize the kinds of design relationships that operate
between countries like Indonesia and Australia. The combination
of concerns and practices associated with Magno and Spedagi can
be seen clearly as strengthening the agenda of Kandangan activism
when these concerns and practices travel at a global scale and con-
nect with other forms of place-based design activism.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
d
e
s
我
/

我

A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

F
/

3
5
3
5
0
1
7
1
6
0
9
4
d
e
s
_
A
_
0
0
5
4
9
p
d

我

结论
This article has presented design activism both occurring in a vil-
lage as inseparable from the urban and as local practices insepa-
rable from global design. The perspective adopted is based on
deeply localized practices that grip contemporary global design
questions through designed objects, 事件, 图片, and practices.
Within the scope of this article, I cannot discuss and engage with
the many Indonesian design activists doing amazing work; 因此, 我
have focused on just one village in an effort to discover how design
activism interfaces with global design questions. I have worked

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

38 Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation
(KSCA), “Introducing Bamboo and
Hemp Bicycles,” https://www.ksca.
land/news/2018/2/18/introducing-
bamboo-hemp-bicycles (访问过
十月 1, 2018).

39 Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet,

Dialogues II, 反式. Hugh Tomlinson,
Barbara Habberjam, and Eliot Ross
阿尔伯特 (纽约: 哥伦比亚大学
按, 2007), 69.

设计问题: 体积 35, 数字 3 夏天 2019

through this interface by considering four themes—intensification,
territorialization, temporality, and co-articulation—derived from
Guy Julier’s questions on the relationship between design activism
and neoliberalism.

Rather than trying to define design activism as a global
movement, this article raises the possibility for a decolonizing
study of design that begins in specific places and is led by the
concerns of those places. This process challenges the definitions
and boundaries of design as they shift in global discourse. The tell-
ing of this story of village-level design activism is meant both as a
contribution to the growing scholarly debate about the efficacy,
范围, and scale of global design activism and as an invitation for
design scholars to open up dialogues with designers who are mak-
ing valuable contributions to local politics and ecological change at
多尺度.

致谢
Thanks go to Jessica Lea Dunn for introducing me to Magno and
Spedagi. Thank you to Kirsten Bradley for her research on tempeh
benguk. Thank you to Singgih Kartono, Tri Wahyuni, Francisca
Callista (Siska), and the Kandangan community for your time and
generosity of spirit.