I am back in Sampit now. It is funny how preconception works and how it influence your psyche. The first time in the city my head is filled with negative preconceptions on horror stories and news about the riots that happen here 7 years ago. The second time everything is much different. I am more familiar with the surroundings. I am not as afraid as before.
But maybe that is not the explanation at all. Maybe it is the aftershock effect of my wandering time in the last few months. In January I spent my entire time repacking 10 years of life back to fit into two suitcases. In February I slept in a sleeping bag for a month at my sister’s place in Los Angeles. It’s inconvenient but I enjoy it nevertheless. An interesting metro-nomadic life. I went many times to LA library and visited many interesting architecture. And then in March, plunged myself in Europe and zipping through cities there. In every other day I had to live in a new environment, always alert and self-conscious on everything I encounter. During those times I was so physically disoriented, mentally lonely, intellectually displaced, and spiritually restless. In April I thought the turbulence was over when I landed in a place called Jakarta.
So wrong. That month I went through all the philosophical stupidity of what it means to return, what is change, what is home, and what is shit (just kidding on the last one). No choice because I am interested in it, “stupid-ness” and the philosophical musing of it. And a few days after that I have to go to Kalimantan, another crazy place, a land the size of Germany with road network the size of a 1st century Roman province. In a week I passed through most of the major cities there. Maybe that’s the reason. So maybe it has nothing to do with preconception. Maybe it is just pre-smartness. An aftershock effect on a mentally disrupted person.
Ok back to Sampit. I just want to jot down my thoughts, my incoherence-now (thanks Cissy for the word, like it) for later plans. I visited many cities of various size and range in the last month, right. Sometimes I am so bored in the car seat and just want to bang my head to the window. But I don’t need to because the roads are so bad here and the car window will bang your head for you. Well, all this trips are actually quite interesting if I can use it to observe more closely the development of cities. We know that an urban area always consists of a set of universal elements, the DNA of a city such as commerce, density, infrastructure, politics, dichotomy of private and public spaces, etc.
This should be an opportunity to document it. For example, what is a mall before a mall, how does it develop? There are plenty of proto-malls here, each with it’s own architectural strategies of a commercial building (façade, site, and section). Of course we can know all of these from previous studies and other technical literature in the field. But this is direct observation and has the potential for new conjectures. It is just like how 19th century anthropologists from Europe “discover” primitive tribes in parts of Asia and Africa and are able to postulate new theories on the development human civilizations including the ones in Europe. Parallel to that, maybe I can compile an investigation on cities in Indonesia and fit it into a larger historical genealogy of cities. In this trip, I bring my Delirious New York with me for inspiration. It is amazing in re-reading Koolhaas, how so many ideas or thinking in that book still permeate through many of his projects today. The form of the writing itself (not the content) is already so interesting. It seems like after 1978 that he just used that book as manual for his practice and all his works today.
But maybe that is not the explanation at all. Maybe it is the aftershock effect of my wandering time in the last few months. In January I spent my entire time repacking 10 years of life back to fit into two suitcases. In February I slept in a sleeping bag for a month at my sister’s place in Los Angeles. It’s inconvenient but I enjoy it nevertheless. An interesting metro-nomadic life. I went many times to LA library and visited many interesting architecture. And then in March, plunged myself in Europe and zipping through cities there. In every other day I had to live in a new environment, always alert and self-conscious on everything I encounter. During those times I was so physically disoriented, mentally lonely, intellectually displaced, and spiritually restless. In April I thought the turbulence was over when I landed in a place called Jakarta.
So wrong. That month I went through all the philosophical stupidity of what it means to return, what is change, what is home, and what is shit (just kidding on the last one). No choice because I am interested in it, “stupid-ness” and the philosophical musing of it. And a few days after that I have to go to Kalimantan, another crazy place, a land the size of Germany with road network the size of a 1st century Roman province. In a week I passed through most of the major cities there. Maybe that’s the reason. So maybe it has nothing to do with preconception. Maybe it is just pre-smartness. An aftershock effect on a mentally disrupted person.
Ok back to Sampit. I just want to jot down my thoughts, my incoherence-now (thanks Cissy for the word, like it) for later plans. I visited many cities of various size and range in the last month, right. Sometimes I am so bored in the car seat and just want to bang my head to the window. But I don’t need to because the roads are so bad here and the car window will bang your head for you. Well, all this trips are actually quite interesting if I can use it to observe more closely the development of cities. We know that an urban area always consists of a set of universal elements, the DNA of a city such as commerce, density, infrastructure, politics, dichotomy of private and public spaces, etc.
This should be an opportunity to document it. For example, what is a mall before a mall, how does it develop? There are plenty of proto-malls here, each with it’s own architectural strategies of a commercial building (façade, site, and section). Of course we can know all of these from previous studies and other technical literature in the field. But this is direct observation and has the potential for new conjectures. It is just like how 19th century anthropologists from Europe “discover” primitive tribes in parts of Asia and Africa and are able to postulate new theories on the development human civilizations including the ones in Europe. Parallel to that, maybe I can compile an investigation on cities in Indonesia and fit it into a larger historical genealogy of cities. In this trip, I bring my Delirious New York with me for inspiration. It is amazing in re-reading Koolhaas, how so many ideas or thinking in that book still permeate through many of his projects today. The form of the writing itself (not the content) is already so interesting. It seems like after 1978 that he just used that book as manual for his practice and all his works today.