19:00 — 21:00
+ What Bungalows Can Tell by Mira Asriningtyas, Paoletta Holst, and Brigita Murti
+ Rural Life in Hamar, Ethiopia: Ecological and cultural challenges written by Bazo Morfa, illustrated by Gele Hailu
Sowing Stories in Archival Absence marks the start of PrintRoom’s 2023 public event series, featuring presentations by Wapke Feenstra, Gele Hailu, Indra Gleizde, Mira Asriningtyas and Paoletta Holst.
Rural Life in Hamar, Ethiopia: Ecological and cultural challenges is written by Bazo Morfa and published by The Rural School of Economics. The Rural School of Economic is a collaborative international infrastructure initiated by artist collective Myvillages for learning new perspectives on the rural context as an environment of cultural production. One of the co-founders, Wapke Feenstra, met Hamar illustrator Gele Hailu. Now based in Rotterdam, Gele is one out of only four Hamars living outside of Ethiopia. He told about his childhood friend Bazo – a good writer eager to tell the world about the struggles Hamar are facing due to climate and socio-political changes. This is how the illustrated publication, Rural Life in Hamar, Ethiopia: Ecological and Cultural Challenges, printed by Lumbung Press at documenta 15 came to be.
The book relays an autobiographical account of Bazo’s experience of a drought caused by climate change, struggles for adaptation, strict local customs and women’s rights. All through a local perspective as the older brother of a family that recently lost most of their livestock.
During the evening Indra Gleizde, the book’s editor, will give a short presentation and live reading, we will listen to Hamar music and Gele Hailu will provide commentary on his illustrations.
PrintRoom is also delighted to celebrate the book launch of What Bungalows Can Tell, a project by Mira Asriningtyas, Paoletta Holst, and Brigita Murti, published by Onomatopee.
What Bungalows Can Tell is the result of extensive artistic and architectural research on the village of Kaliurang (Yogyakarta region, Indonesia). The publication brings together different essays and a series of photographs that critically explore the spatial, transformative effects of globalisation and heritage formation on a local scale. It looks specifically at the colonial bungalows — what can they tell?— and the stories around them, questioning how they were used in the past, what their function is in the present and what they can represent in the future. What Bungalows Can Tell intends to take into account the colonial history of the village and, at the same time, bring to the fore the voices, stories and local wisdoms often eclipsed by more prominent forms of Western knowledge production.
