A museum artefact installation produced for -2m, Voices From Below The Sea exhibition at the Jakarta History Museum, '35 Years, 33 Meters' was produced with the support of Pak Kwik, Rasdulah, Tubagus Rachmat and SAM fund for art and ecology.
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“Tell me about extinction,” said Alina to the storyteller.

– Seno Gumira Ajidarma, ‘The Last Becak on Earth’

Through unexpected encounters during our ‘Ziarah Utara’ walk across the Jakarta coast in March and April 2019, we dove into narratives of the capital city of Jakarta. We searched for becaks, three-wheeled environmentally friendly vehicles that once crowded Jakarta street corners. Because they were considered unmodern, and blamed for the city’s swelling traffic jams, becaks were banned from operating in Jakarta. Wounding Jakarta’s identity, tens of thousands of becaks, representing the livelihoods of many of Jakarta’s poor, were piled in heaps in municipal yards, and later thrown into Jakarta Bay to become artificial reefs. Piles of becaks on the sea floor became places for fish to happily breed, and Soeharto (Indonesia’s second president) would often mull over the political situation in the republic while fishing above the reefs, a favoured pastime of his.

-33m is an intervention that acknowledges that daily struggles for livelihoods and the sheer human sweat extracted through the demands of various forms of labour can never be completely expunged from Jakarta. We have listened to tales of struggle told through the mellifluous melodies of Pak Rasdulah (a becak driver who famously nominated himself as a candidate for governor of Jakarta in 2002). We have searched for sunken becaks in Jakarta Bay. Searching for a tiny spot in the sea requires luck, intuition and a strong memory, and this was found in the person of Pak Kwik. With Pak Kwik’s assistance, the place where becaks were sunk 35 years prior was located. A short expedition to sea was launched, and we were able to retrieve fragments of forgotten Jakarta history, the bitter story of the becak and the fate of its drivers. These pieces can become ‘relics’ with which to salvage Jakarta’s sunken identity.