ABOUT THE BALLAD OF ISLAND G

Whilst living in Jakarta, we have been researching the effects of a proposed megaproject to effectively dam Jakarta Bay to prevent tidal flooding on the lives and livelihoods of North Jakarta’s working class communities, and particularly traditional fisherfolk. Jakarta Bay is a fascinating place. Flying into Jakarta’s Sukarno-Hatta airport, you can see thousands, if not tens of thousands, of bamboo cultivation pens for mussels and shrimp planted in the bay; a vast commons for Jakarta’s fisherfolk. You can also see the remaining slithers of Jakarta Bay’s endemic mangrove forests, surviving on the fringes of gated communities, and the mouths of the thirteen rivers that empty into the bay. The mangrove forests continue to provide habitat for crocodiles (2!), water monitors, monkeys, musangs, water snakes, innumerable fish and aquatic birds.

Jakarta has largely abandoned its coastal identity since the mid-19th century, when the Dutch colonial government moved to the higher ground of the inland area. North Jakarta has, however, long nurtured a kind of working class cosmopolitanism and a migrant worker culture bound up with Java’s north coast, and Indonesia’s seafaring traditions. This culture, a rough, bawdy, heartfelt sublimation of suffering and hardship, is something we badly want to understand more deeply.

Amidst all of this, lies Island G, slowly disintegrating. Island G is an artificial island constructed as part of the above mentioned megaproject. Construction of the island began in 2014. It was intended to be 161 hectares in size, accommodating a small satellite ‘new town’ development with elite real estate, office towers, malls and a pedestrian square; what the developers termed an ‘archipelago city district in historic Jakarta Bay’. However the legal basis for reclamation was thin. Following a graft case in 2016, permission for the construction of Island G was retracted, and it has remained as a serene, slowly dissipating sandbank visited by birds ever since.

ARTIST BIO

Hannah Ekin and Jorgen Doyle have been living between Alice Springs and Jakarta over the last few years. Hannah is a library worker, visual artist, translator and researcher. Jorgen is a gardener, visual artist, translator and researcher. They are amateurs at all the above-listed roles. You can find more of their work in Jakarta here.