{"id":58941,"date":"2026-04-07T20:30:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T16:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/?p=58941"},"modified":"2026-04-07T19:00:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T15:00:39","slug":"jakartas-urban-middle-gudskul-redefines-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/jakartas-urban-middle-gudskul-redefines-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Jakarta&#8217;s Urban &#8216;Middle&#8217;: How Gudskul Redefines Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"background: #f7fafc; padding: 15px;\">\n<p><strong>Quick Read<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Gudskul has pivoted from large-scale events to a smaller, values-based model to foster deeper community engagement.<\/li>\n<li>The collective operates in the &#8216;middle&#8217; between state authority and marginalized groups to maintain political independence.<\/li>\n<li>Gudskul\u2019s practice focuses on sustaining knowledge production in a city defined by rapid urban destruction and change.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>JAKARTA (Azat TV) \u2013 The Indonesian art collective Gudskul has emerged as a central figure in redefining how urban space and political agency are governed in Jakarta. As the city continues to grapple with the legacy of the post-1998 political transition, the collective is actively rejecting the binary of state-controlled institutions and marginalized resistance, opting instead to occupy the \u201cmiddle\u201d\u2014a critical, autonomous space that challenges how power is exercised in the modern era.<\/p>\n<h2>Navigating the Middle Power Dynamics<\/h2>\n<p>For years, Jakarta has operated under shifting political tides, moving from the rigid centralization of the New Order era to a fragmented, populist landscape. According to <em>e-flux<\/em>, this shift has rendered traditional top-down governance less effective, creating a vacuum where informal networks have become the norm. Gudskul, which evolved from the earlier group ruangrupa (ruru), has positioned itself within this gray area, functioning as a hub that is neither fully institutional nor entirely peripheral. This strategy allows the collective to maintain independence while navigating the complex intersection of art, urban survival, and political engagement.<\/p>\n<h2>The Evolution of Collective Spaces<\/h2>\n<p>The collective\u2019s growth trajectory\u2014from a rented house in Tebet to the larger Gudang Sarinah ecosystem, and finally to its current scaled-down model\u2014reflects a conscious effort to prioritize values over spectacle. By limiting their venue capacity to 150 people, members of the collective have sought to foster sustained knowledge production and ethical awareness. This shift was a direct response to the pressures of \u201cpractical politics\u201d that threatened to dilute their mission. By operating from the middle, Gudskul aims to govern from below, providing a counter-narrative to the state-led development that has historically dominated the city\u2019s landscape.<\/p>\n<h2>Sustaining Values in an Evolving City<\/h2>\n<p>The core challenge for Gudskul remains the balance between critical pedagogy and long-term sustainability. As the group continues to experiment with hybrid economic models, they are forced to re-examine the very definition of ownership and agency in a city prone to rapid, often destructive, development. Their practice is not just about producing objects or hosting events; it is about documenting the process of living within a city that is constantly in flux. The collective\u2019s focus on humor, generosity, and curiosity serves as an essential framework for survival in an unpredictable urban environment.<\/p>\n<p><em>The enduring significance of Gudskul\u2019s approach lies in its ability to normalize the &#8216;middle&#8217; as a legitimate site of political and social action, suggesting that in post-authoritarian societies, the most effective resistance often occurs in the spaces that state power overlooks or deems irrelevant.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Gudskul art collective operates in a unique &#8216;middle&#8217; space, reshaping Jakarta&#8217;s urban governance and resisting traditional power hierarchies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow5Nm1DA:productID":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[54479,54477,13071,32455,54478],"class_list":["post-58941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-art-collectives","tag-gudskul","tag-indonesia","tag-jakarta","tag-urbanism"],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Jakartas-Urban.jpg","_embedded":{"wp:featuredmedia":[{"id":-1,"source_url":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Jakartas-Urban.jpg","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59058,"href":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58941\/revisions\/59058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azat.tv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}