The Decapitation of the Future

A photograph of a man wearing a bike helmet, riding atop and steering a motorbike, assisted by three young men who help push the motorbike from behind through high water that is reaching them up to their knees, suggesting a flood. In the background, brightly painted garage doors and facades of low-rise buildings, a palm tree, and a cloudy sky, suggesting a tropical setting.

77% of the Indonesian territory is water, it has priceless and crucial values—social, cultural, and political. As an archipelagic country, its geographic condition is very influential on cross-cultural and has unique biodiversity. Along with the pace of globalization, the intimate, archaic relationship between humans and the ocean has become increasingly compromised, with the reality in plain view: the impact of sea level rise significantly threatens the 115 islands and coastal areas of Indonesia.

‘What happens in Indonesia if the projections are correct that, in the next 10 years, they may have to move their capital because they’re going to be underwater?”

Joe Biden [1]

Allowing us to see traces of an extinct civilization, Java’s sediment layers still hold ancient ruins as shallow as two meters below the ground surface. The Majapahit empire that existed for three centuries, from the 13th to the 16th, attained its peak of glory with the distinctive characteristics of an agricultural society that had succeeded in optimizing the potential of its territory. The cause of its collapse remains unknown, although some proofs of an apocalyptic flash flood, caused either by natural disaster or a conflict over power, are easy to discover.

A photograph of a man's right underarm with outstretched thumb pointing to layers of earth, partly covered in foliage, holding what looks like archaeological remains between them

To see a sample of the process towards a lost civilization, we don't need to be time travelers. Not so far from the Majapahit site, about 50 km to the east, there is a man-made ‘failure monument.’ Hot mud gushing out of the bowels of the earth caused by a failure in the process of drilling for natural gas has resulted in an uncontrolled mudflow for more than 15 years. It is considered to be the biggest mud volcano in the world. Methane, one of the main components of natural gas, is a type of greenhouse gas that causes global warming.

Meanwhile, the mission to save Jakarta from sinking is getting extremely expensive. The decision that has been taken is just a strategy to buy more time, exacerbating the practice of land speculation and land conversions that trigger the widening of economic gaps within the population.

A photograph of a man wearing a straw hat and sunglasses, looking at a skull he is holding with both his hands, against the background of an earth wall.

Let’s peek at the ground zero location of the new capital of Indonesia. The area of 260,000 hectares in East Kalimantan province was once a tropical rainforest. Since the 1980s it has been deforested and is today covered by an industrial forest. Over the monoculture land, overloaded logging trucks fill the air with pollutants. No snakes, no birds, no turtles, no orangutans, only industrial forest workers with unhappy expressions. While the indigenous Dayak people is helpless and culturally amputated, their forest and land are exploited by narrow-minded identity politics.

A photograph of a man wearing summer clothing and a hot, walking over a wide flat surface of cracked-up dry earth, in the far background low green vegetation and blue sky

An attitude of skepticism haunts the imagination of the proposed scenario for rescuing Jakarta from the crisis, a scenario which is likely to create a multicomplex new crisis instead. What will happen to the remaining 23% of Indonesia’s land? To reflect the degree to which failures of the past and the present are collapsing on each other, it won’t be an exaggeration to say that we are experiencing difficulties understanding the meaning of the word ‘future.’

A photograph of a yellow-red dirt road cutting through a landscape, dense tropical forest to the left, regimented growth of an industrial forest to the right. A logging truck carrying timber drives on the road facing the image, in the background far-reaching stretches of brownish patches of land suggesting a landscape that had been transformed through industrial use.

[1] Remarks by President Biden at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, July 27, 2021, National Counterterrorism Center, Liberty Crossing Intelligence Campus, McLean, Virginia.

Fig. 1: Expensive rescue

Massive groundwater extraction and sea level rise are only a few of the causes behind the sinking of Jakarta. At the worst, the land subsidence reaches 34.2 cm per year. Land hoarding and sea wall construction along the coastline have been conducted as a rescue effort. Photo: Irwan Ahmett, 2021

Fig. 2: The alleged site of the Majapahit empire

Fertile volcanic land and abundant water from rivers, along with the capability to build irrigation systems, have made people of the Majapahit era the first ‘crazy rich Asians’ in the location of today's Indonesia. Photo: Irwan Ahmett, 2021

Fig. 3: Why was it not cremated?

Found in incomplete condition at the ruin site of the Javanese Hindu terracotta culture. Was this person a commoner, a king or a queen, a rebel or a slave? Photo: Irwan Ahmett, 2021

Fig. 4. Poison mud

On an area of more than 1000 hectares, 10.000 houses comprising 16 villages and countless livestock have been buried, and more than 40.000 people have been displaced. Photo: Irwan Ahmett, 2021

Fig. 5: The location of Indonesia’s new capital

Named Nusantara (meaning: 'outer island'), located in the East Kalimantan province, the site is an industrial forest owned by timber and coal companies. The act of clearing forests to move the center of power is not a new thing but has long been practiced and narrated in Javanese chronicles of old. Photo: Irwan Ahmett, 2021

Irwan Ahmett

Irwan Ahmett is an artist based in Jakarta who uses art to illuminate social issues and question the nature of human interactions. He is renowned for hiss interactive urban interventions, of which he writes: “I often make social campaigns independently, through communicative strategy and a playful visual arts approach. As with fun activities, art would be able to touch the emotions especially when it is able to engage the public directly into the creative process so that it could provide a real experience”. Irwan often works together with his partner, Tita Salina. Their works have been exhibited within Indonesia and throughout Europe and Asia. They have participated in projects and artist residences in Indonesia, Singapore, the Netherlands, Poland, USA, and Germany. Both artists live and work in Jakarta, Indonesia where they design projects that focus on social issues in the local area.