In August 2025, two members of the Void Art Centre team and artist Joey O’Gorman travelled from Derry city, North Ireland to Indonesia to visit Jatiwangi Art Factory (JaF). Over the course of two weeks, they spent time with the collective in Majalengka, learning about its work and the wider community that surrounds it.
Before this visit, the team had already met Ghorie and Pandu from JaF through online conversations. These informal exchanges revolved around shared interests in accidental businesses, collaborative ways of making, land justice, and local craft practices. Throughout these discussions, the importance of friendship within both organisations remained central, shaping not only their working environments but also how they engage with their local communities.
Exploring local industries and products
During their stay in Majalengka, the Void team travelled across the region to meet local farmers, growers, and producers. These visits offered insight into the industries that shape the local economy and daily life.
One visit took them to a clove farm, where they learned about the harvesting and processing of clove buds, including the production of clove coffee and clove oil. They also spent time at Kopi Liberikaku, a small farm producing and roasting Liberica coffee beans, a variety rarely found in Ireland or the UK.
In addition, they met with farmers who produce gula jawa (palm sugar) using traditional techniques. Each visit ended with bags of locally produced goods, as well as a growing curiosity about alternative forms of exchange and trade that extend beyond conventional markets.
Event collective and gathering
Two public events were organised during the visit in collaboration with JaF. These included 'Roti Irlandia', held at Roti Wangi, and 'Farmusaji', a gathering involving JaF, Void Art Centre, and Roem Institute.
Roti Irlandia was conceived as a sharing event that explored friendship as a foundation for testing ideas and aligning collective working methods. Participants exchanged knowledge about local recipes, preparing dishes such as Irish soda bread, scallion pancakes, and Indonesian sambal. Cooking together became a way of situating knowledge within collective action, allowing participants to learn through making.
Farmusaji, meanwhile, focused on meeting farmers and growers who already work closely with JaF. At Void Art Centre, the team often refers to the concept of mapping in public, a way of sharing working processes openly with local communities. This gathering echoed that approach, allowing the visitors to understand more about JaF’s ecosystem and civic engagement through direct encounters with its network.
Learning about land practices and sustainability
Another focus of the visit was learning about approaches to land practices and environmental sustainability. This aspect was of particular interest to artist Joey O’Gorman.
Joey had been selected from a shortlist of five practitioners working across sustainability, ecology, and environmental practice. His work aligns with JaF’s interest in experimentation across disciplines, particularly in exploring forms of co-creation between human and non-human actors.
One project that stood out was Perhutana, a social forestry initiative that seeks to reclaim an eight-hectare plot of land from industrial development and transform it into a collectively managed forest.
As part of this exploration, the team was introduced to Patanjala, a spatial and territorial planning approach inherited from the ancestors of the Sundanese people and based on river basin systems.
They attended a Patanjala Town Hall meeting and reflected on how this movement resonates with environmental issues in Ireland, such as the threat posed by proposed gold mining projects in the Sperrin Mountains.
