With its unique shapes and styles, lumbung is an easily recognizable building in Indonesia, similar to a barn. In the official dictionary of the Indonesian language, Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia, lumbung is defined as “a container to store agricultural products, commonly rice, in the form of a house on stilts with walls of woven wood or bamboo.” This definition has implications for the way lumbung is interpreted: lumbung can be defined as a place to store harvested crops, particularly in agrarian societies.

At the same time, this description confines the meaning of the word to a distinctive architecture. As a practice, however, lumbung transcends its physical appearance as a building and expands to include spaces beyond the agricultural. In Indonesia’s cultural discourse, the term lumbung is used to describe shared collective resources. Seen from this point of view, lumbung is not only a building or object but also a set of values and a cosmology that describes the living practice of a society. It is evidence of a communal life marked by the spirit of collaboration, and its characteristics can be traced back to premodern societies. Today, the accelerated development and modernization of predominantly capitalist modes of production demand a constant redefinition of values. lumbung calling asks how these values can be translated into artistic practice and open up new spaces for conversation.

(From press information by documenta, 18 March 2021)