WORKSHOPS
As part of the public program of Polar and Tropic, a series of audience activations are proposed that position art as a tool for encounter, reflection, and collective transformation. Through workshops, participatory, performative, and community-based practices, these proposals explore how creative processes can open up shared spaces to imagine new models of relationship, resistance, and care. The emphasis of these activities lies in shared experience, collective gestures, and the potential of art to generate connections, meanings, and spaces of possibility both within and beyond the exhibition framework.
PABELIT
- FRIDAY 03 OCT
- 18:00 -20:00
ACTIVITIES | POLAR AND TROPIC | Swab Venue
by GOR
As part of this year’s public program, the GOR team presents a participatory activation rooted in lived experience, shared space, and resilience. Emerging from contexts of spatial constraint—including experiences of imprisonment—Pabelit explores how creativity and collectivity can generate space where there is none.
The project takes its name from a Sundanese word meaning “entangled” or “convoluted”, and refers to a series of practices developed using only the most modest materials available—plastic bags, hands, time, and presence. At Swab, Pabelit becomes an invitation: a shared making session where participants engage in a quiet, mnemonic process, collectively transforming plastic waste into something symbolic and tactile.
Rather than focusing on objects, the emphasis is on process, collaboration, and being together. This action is both a gesture of remembrance and a tool for creating community within the fair—an intimate way of sharing space, story, and material. Participants are invited to bring used plastic bags and take part in a 2-hour session that culminates in a collectively created object whose final form remains open to possibility.
MAKAN KEBIJAKAN
- SATURDAY 04 OCT
- 18:00 -19:00
ACTIVITIES | POLAR AND TROPIC | Swab Venue
With Jatiwagni Art Factory
(literally, “Eating the Policy”)
Performative Food Preparation
As a community, we aim to build new relationships with the land through artistic practices in many forms. We broaden the idea of collectivity by involving a wide range of actors—including those in the art world—and by creating a multisensory space that embraces multiple perspectives, including human and more-than-human. Together we ask: How can an art fair serve as a site for developing commoning strategies that return agency to the land?
We propose a performative food-preparation session that brings together artists, activists, policy-makers, collectors, gallerists, media representatives, and entrepreneurs. Acting as “policy makers,” participants will design a free-lunch program of nutritious meals for students, inspired by national initiatives in Indonesia. While preparing the menu, they will imaginatively explore the program’s aims, impacts, and implementation strategies.
This session will serve as a brainstorming forum whose outcomes can be applied to the 3,500 students of Jatiwangi—demonstrating how the art world can engage directly with local needs and contexts.
Colective practices: a space for young artists and art students
- SUNDAY 05 OCT
- 12:30 -13:30
ACTIVITIES | POLAR AND TROPIC | Swab Venue
With Tenthaus
As part of the Polar and Tropic Public Program, Tenthaus invites art students and visitors to an afternoon of exploration.
Together, we will engage with printed matter, video works, and sound pieces currently on view, opening conversations around collective practices, contemporary artistic forms, and the role of institutions in shaping or limiting the conditions for artistic expression.
Through shared reflection, we will explore how listening, reciprocity, and interdependence can inform artistic processes. We will ask how artists can create spaces for mutual support, rooted in care, accountability, and collective world-building beyond the exhibition space.