Whereas policymakers envision cities, what if we imagined the future of Indonesian neighbourhoods as sketched by the dreams and hopes of their residents? This little invitation touches upon time itself as a border: between memory and hope, between what has been and what might be. This project traces how kampung dwellers narrate their own future through storytelling, sketching social and physical borders that are not yet built but already felt. It is through this temporal bordering that urban neighbourhoods articulate their aspirations, contest exclusions, and negotiate who gets to belong in the city yet to come.
Aireen Grace Andal situates her project at the intersection of contemporary Asian cities, socio-spatial theory, and creative methods. It explores how temporal bordering (i.e. distinguishing between past, present, and future) intersects with local aspirations and visions in kampungs in Indonesia. Such thoughts aim to rethink the freedom and limits of imagining the future, engaging with contemporary debates in border-making and speculative urban futures, and how bordering the future is co-constitutive of meaning in urban neighbourhoods.
This project builds on and contributes to a space-time aspect of border-making imaginaries and practices. Imaginaries reflect embodied experiences of place as well as contestations and tensions that characterise aspirations, with all the mess, beauty, and possibility of real lives trying to push against limits while drawing futures into being.
Aireen also investigates the narratives that emerged from “storytelling”, which she argues has much to say about the politics of knowledge production within socio-spatial borders. By examining local “futurings” closely, she hopes to advance the power of storytelling by showing how temporal borders are constantly contested and negotiated. This space-time perspective allows for a deeper exploration of how historical developments, ongoing changes, and future aspirations shape the envisioned boundaries that define kampungs.
Whatever began through “Bordering Hope” is envisioned to expand to other cities in Indonesia, across Southeast Asia, and along the urban coastlines, touched by the Indian Ocean.