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Mapping Invisible Cities - An exhibition about urban experience in six Asian megacities

This transnational curatorial project was a commission by the Goethe Institut in Jakarta, aiming to encourage an exchange with Europe, but also to utilise the network of their centres to promote creative interaction among young artists in the region. Focusing on six Asian megacities (Jakarta, Hanoi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Singapore) and through the work of 26 international artists, this exhibition explored the ways that photography’s expanded, and still expanding, field of operations, may mediate contemporary urban experience. Six photographic workshops were organised for local photographers in the six respective cities. These were conducted by the German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski. The material produced in the context of those workshops addressed different aspects of urban living in South East Asia, from scenes of urban pastoral, steel structures and chaotic traffic, to unnoticed fragments of urban ordinariness. Selecting and curating the work, Supartono had two aims, firstly, to map the visible and invisible historical, cultural, spatial and social interconnections between the cities and how these are infiltrated in the public imaginary; and secondly, to outline new directions in contemporary South East Asian photography, an area of practice that at the time lacked critical attention in Asian and international art discourses. The mapping(s) that the exhibition proposes, both literal and abstract, urge the viewer to rethink preconceptions about what is termed western or oriental, about what may constitute the indigenous gaze, national or transnational consciousness. The exhibition toured the Goethe Institutes in each of the selected cities Jakarta, Indonesia (June-July 2008), Singapore (August-September 2008), Manila, the Philippines (October-November 2008), Bangkok, Thailand (January-February 2009), Hanoi, Vietnam (March-May 2009), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (June 2009) and Hamburg, Germany (August-September 2009).