Transient Museum of a Thousand Conversations: LIR at ISCP is temporarily closed to the public until further notice. To screen videos of the exhibition’s public programs, visit our Facebook Videos page here. For installation views of the exhibition, visit our Facebook album here.

ISCP has hosted an annual institution-in-residence since 2011. This kind of residency was initiated to support cultural exchange by bringing an international perspective to a local context. This year, ISCP has invited LIR Space, a Yogyakarta-based independent arts institute. LIR will be taking over the second floor gallery of ISCP from January 28 through August 28, 2020 and will present an exhibition and a series of public programs during this time.

LIR Space was established in 2011 by Mira Asriningtyas, a curator and writer, and Dito Yuwono, an artist; the institution’s program ranges from exhibition laboratories and research-based art projects to public programs, residencies, and alternative art education platforms. LIR’s projects are characterized by multidisciplinary collaboration and performative exhibitions, fostering continuous transgenerational transmission of knowledge, memory, and history. Since 2017, LIR has been working on a long-term site-specific project titled 900mdpl in the founders’ hometown of Kaliurang, Indonesia—an aging resort village under an active volcano—with the aim of preserving collective memory.

The project at ISCP, Transient Museum of a Thousand Conversations is an adaptation of 900mdpl. LIR invites artists every two years to undertake fieldwork in Kaliurang, resulting in solo projects at various sites throughout the village.  Their projects are later reinstalled together in a temporary museum of oral history as a prototype for the future MUKKA (Community Museum of Kaliurang) envisioned by LIR. Selected artworks from this ongoing project will be presented at ISCP alongside additional new work by local artists from Kaliurang. At ISCP, LIR’s intervention will create an expansive portrait of the landscape, people and society of Kaliurang, by focusing on subjects such as botanical specimens, alternative histories of Dutch colonization, traumatic memory, national identity, culinary heritage, social space and storytelling.

Artists included in the exhibition are Edita Atmaja, Ibnu Banu Harli, Ahmad Barokah, Lala Bohang, Arief Budiman, Fyerool Darma, Paoletta Holst & Brigita Murti, Mella Jaarsma, Kelompok Fotografi Kaliurang, Agung Kurniawan, Jompet Kuswidananto, Maryanto, Dimaz Maulana, Anggun Priambodo, Mark Salvatus, Yudha Sandy and Rara Sekar.

Transient Museum of a Thousand Conversations is supported, in part, by Hartfield Foundation; New York City Council Member for the 33rd District Stephen T. Levin; New York City Council Member for the 34th District Antonio Reynoso; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF); The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.