HOUSING AS A VERB : Solo Exhibition by AWAN SIMATUPANG
April 22 - May 18, 2006
CP ARTSPACE, JAKARTA




Housing As a Verb
by Jim Supangkat, Curator

In the 1970s, the English architect John FC Turner, also known as a housing planner, criticized the housing standards for lowincome citizens. The standards proved to be ineffective, albeit having engaged complex calculations, long-term investment involving subsidy and international aids, choice of location based on land value, minimal costs for housing developments, and installments using credits from banks. The criticism gave rise to some serious concerns.

The housing standards had been developed from 1915 to 1940 and became a concept used throughout the world to develop low-cost housing estates. Statistic data, however, showed that the development of such housing estates for low-income citizens did not reach its desired goal, as the intended tenants eventually did not live there. Many houses were left in disarray and occupied by squatters, while many others were sold as general houses in order to save the investments. Low-income citizens, meanwhile, still built their houses on empty lots in the periphery of the city, and even in the middle of the city, and created slums.

This was precisely the problem that low-cost housing developments wished to solve. John Turner questioned this fact—why did the plan fail? In his book, Freedom to Build (Collier, London: 1972), John Turner suggested that reasons for the failure lay in the policy that hardly gave enough space to consider the future tenants. The concepts of the architecture and living spaces in such housing estates re. ected the American middle class houses in the beginning of the 20th century. Such concepts did not . t most people in poor countries, culturally and economically. John Turner thought that the low-cost housing development could be made effective by considering the culture and attitude of the future tenants. Such consideration required socio-cultural approach, in addition to the economic approach.

Turner believed that this would not only result in the suitability of the houses and the housing system, but also in lowering the building costs. In various trials to build low-cost housing in Peru and India, John Turner eventually involved the future tenants in building their houses and housing system. In Indonesia, the late architect-cum-priest YB Mangunwijaya successfully used this approach to develop the slums along the Code River, Yogyakarta. Turner said that the creation of suitability standards open to many possibilities—just like rules in a game—was a key problem. In Freedom to Build, John Turner put forth the bases of his ideas in building low-cost houses and housing estates. He said that the noun “housing” originated from the verb “to house.” Housing is actually the activity to build house not merely as a place to cover us from the rain and sun.

Housing, according to Turner, is related to the ful. llment of a true, personal need. Building a house is a medium manifesting the maturity of a man or a woman, in relation with a sense of responsibility. Calculations in creating houses are dictated by the personal awareness about curatorial introduction Housing As a Verb corporeal activities; primary activities such as eating and wearing clothes; about perceptions on rearing children; family relationships; social relationships; and the sense of safety and comfort in doing all these activities. Therefore, building houses is a nearly never-ending process.

Housing is in a harmonious process with the tenants along with their efforts to ful. ll the needs pertaining to the changes and developments in their personalities. Albeit being in force in many countries, Turner’s ideas did not grow into a new paradigm in building low cost housing. His views could not beat the deeply rooted economic calculations in building low-cost houses and housing estates. The growth of the housing-materials industry and the conglomeration of housing industry further strengthened the grip of such economic calculations. In housing developments, the standards that had . rst been applied to lowcost housing estates were then used also in middle-class housing estates and the housing estates in general—creating urban enclaves in the suburbia—throughout the world.

People are not fully aware about such situation; it did, however, give rise to a universal symptom in urban lives. The middle class grow more distant to the building process of their houses. They enter their houses only after the houses are done and ready to be inspected. Only the upper class have the privilege of being able to determine the process of building their home. Awan Simatupang, in his Housing as a Verb exhibition at the CP Artspace, seems to verify John Turner’s opinion. As he is not con. ned by real housing problems, idioms in Awan Simatupang’s works can better explain the concept of housing as a true personal need in a human being.

Awan Simatupang’s works in Housing as a Verb propose a reading that housing asa true human need is af. xed to the humanfor as long as he lives. The need grows asan instinct from the womb to the grave. Inhuman lives, the instinct forms the base formany human attitudes, re. ected not only inthe relationship between the human beingand his house in a physical sense, but alsothe relationship between the human beingand his home, in a metaphysical sense. Suchinstinct, for example, is the root for the urgeto . nd comfort and safety here and in theafterworld.

Representations of houses consistently appear in Awan Simatupang’s works in the last three years. His decision to take on the theme of houses, however, did not come suddenly. It. nds its roots in Awan’s meditation about the house as a metaphysical space; a meditation that has been opportunistically manifested in his works long before he took on the theme of houses. The Housing as a Verb exhibition tries to combine the representations of houses in a physical sense, and the representations of houses in the metaphysical sense; both have been created in a long period of time. In this composition, the audience can sense John Turner’s view of housing as a true human need. Awan Simatupang’s decision to take on the theme of houses in the last three years . nds its roots in his personal experiences of living in an urban enclave and of building a house that is not merely a space of residence.

Such experiences relate him to the problems that John Turner had mentioned. Awan Simatupang once lived in an orderly housing complex in an industrial park in Bekasi. It is this experience that made him aware about the need to build a house that is not merely a place of residence. He then moved and tried to build a house by himself, in the periphery of Jakarta. After a short while, however, the house he built is surrounded by other houses, creating a disorderly housing complex. Urban migration makes his vicinity to become densely populated, disorderly, and dirty. Behind his house, arose an ugly huge building used as a place to house female workers going abroad. The atmosphere became eerie—from time to time there will be female singing, as the workers are killing time.

The experience of living in these kinds of housing makes Awan enter into John Turner’s sphere of problems: Awan is still in the process seeking and building a house that is not merely a place of residence—a house in the physical and simultaneously metaphysical senses. The works that take on houses as the subject matter betray such process and his meditation about what houses essentially mean for him.

His work, Yesterday, Today, Forever 2, depicts a string of hanging houses and betrays his view about housing as a noun. The houses are orderly and structured. In reality, however, such a structured life is not a life that gives a sense of safety and comfort. Awan says, “I cannot de. ne the boundaries of when I exist within my territory, and when I exist within the social territory.” As re. ected in his hanging construction Yesterday, Today, Forever 2, such housing is, for him, swaying indeterminately.

Such expression can be linked to John Turner’s view that sees systematic housing as re. ecting the calculation of producers, distributors, technicians, and administrators, who view houses more as things rather than places of residence. The works Inside I show Awan’s view about the essence of houses, by comparing “the house within a person” with “the person within a house.” Which one is more important? As if in answer to this question, the work titled Lullaby betrays Awan’s view of a house as a comfort-giving metaphysical space,  expressed poetically in the form of a wilting hand in a glass house. In his work Noitulove that displays the human evolutionary process,  Awan seems to strengthen his view that the need to build houses in the physical and metaphysical senses has existed since the primitive era. In his view, the failure to ful. Ll such needs in the present signi. es a decline.

His works, Lost; Jauh (Far); Dream; Next;  Menggapai Bulan (Reaching for the Moon); The Show Must Go On; Slipped from the Top; Struggle 1, Struggle 2, Merah (Red), and Welcome re. ect his life in a disorderly housing complex. There are no suitability standards, no physical boundaries. Awan’s metaphysical space is disappearing. In No Fear—an iron veil with a fan, supported by wooden beams—the metaphysical space shows its defensive dimension. Meanwhile, Rumah Besar or Big House is a representation of thefemale workers’ barrack behind his house, and show how a house that merely serveseconomic purposes can lose almost all itsother aspects. Such a barrack does not differfrom an animal’s cage.

All works of Awan Simatupang’s that deal with house as the subject matter seem to show a combat between housing as a verb and housing as a noun; the struggle between the essential need to build a personal space and the house in today’s reality. The house as a commodity has not enough space for human’s true needs. The house as an emergency space for a temporary shelter— which is not considered as a house in any sense—does not give comfort and safety, and is a potential source for aggressive behavior.  Not everybody feels such a combat—especially the middle and lower classes, having no choice as they face the housing problems in the cities and are forced to adapt their needs. Awan, however, feels it. The sensitivity in feeling such a clash is based on his various experiences in living through the comfort-giving metaphysical space—which is not always related to the house.

Long before he was interested in taking on the theme of houses, Awan had been interested in his wife’s . rst pregnancy. “I think my child was in a very safe home, and had he been able to choose, I think he would choose not to be born,” he said. Awan was propelled to create a work about his wife’s pregnancy. As he tried to make it, he sensed a dif. culty in representing this pregnancy in his work. There were no idioms that he found to be suf. cient and equal to the experience of pregnancy. He then decided to cast his wife’s tummy. The results are two bronze sculptures, Ada Untukmu 1 (There for You 1) and Ada Untukmu 2 (reclining). The glimmering inside of the bronze sculptures betrays Awan’s curiosity about his son’s dwelling in the womb.

In another instance, also before he was interested in the theme of houses, Awan had been fascinated by Torajan graves in the stone caves, structured as an apartment building. He also fell into deep thoughts as he saw a burial place in Tomohon, north Sulawesi, where all graves were in the form of houses, with pillars and roofs. He saw it as the village for the dead. An awareness rose within him about housing for the dead. Such awareness about the houses and housing for the dead again propelled Awan to create works, giving rise to Korek Api or Match, an intriguing bronze sculpture. His imagination grew. Awan felt that Torajan graves resembled used matches re-stored to their box. It is also the awareness about housing for the dead that based his work, Hanya Permainan or Only a Game. The basic idea for this particular work is congklak, a traditional children’s game; the work, however, depicted a boathouse in the larung tradition, the tradition to ship the dead to the sea, the last resting place, or the house for the dead in Awan’s view.

From the collection of experiences, meditations, and seething ideas in creating his works, Awan Simatupang arrives to awareness that the house is not merely a physical space. The house as a reality has a metaphysical layer. The instinct about the house as a metaphysical space is attached to the human being just as the shells in tortoises and snails. Such instinct has been shaped in the womb and culturally exists even when life has ended. Therefore: Can such instinct, which became activated especially when one is building a house, be ignored? Reworded using John Turner’s view, the question becomes: As ‘housing’ is interpreted more and more as a noun, can its understanding as a verb be ignored

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