Our house

FOR SIX years, Karbon has been discussing about the contemporary art in seven print editions. Starting this 2007, Karbon will turn into an online journal and focus more on the city within the context of urban studies and the visual culture. Meanwhile, the discussions about the contemporary art will be viewed more as a material for analyses, especially if we consider the fact that the contemporary art has been drawing on problems of the city and the visual culture for inspirations, more than the city’s having taken advantages from the contemporary art.

In this initial edition, Karbon runs the theme of House, which is the first space that begins all activities in the city. In his article, Darrundono states that apartments are not yet needed in Jakarta, while Farabi Fakih analyzes how the post-New Order middle class view their house. We also interview one of the editors of Lintas Tebet, or Across Tebet, a community magazine in Tebet, South Jakarta, which was published in 2002 to 2003. The edition closes with a review of the Apartment Project, an art project that ruangrupa conducted in 2003 about the phenomenon of the vertical houses in Jakarta.

We are open for your ideas and criticism, so that the problems of the city do not remain an alien discourse and owned merely by big cities; rather, they take place in our daily lives, realistically but almost impossible to solve. Hopefully Karbon can serve as a beginning for broader discussions.

Thank you.



Ardi Yunanto, Nuraini Juliastuti & T. Ismail Reza
editor