International Urban Studies Workshop

PROJECT OVERVIEW
Re-Governing / Opening the City, from Borneo is a socially engaged international urban studies workshop based in the river city of Banjarmasin and Banjarbaru, South Kalimantan, as the central field site. It understands the city not only as an object governed from above, but also as a living field continuously shaped through everyday knowledge, environmental adaptation, networks of care and mutual support, faith, ritual, movement, and small but persistent acts of collective agency.

The project will unfold simultaneously across three different sites and through three artistic media. Mixed groups of participants from Indonesia and Japan will work with local communities through field observation, dialogue, interviews, participatory research, and collective making. Each group will develop a public form of expression—moving image, participatory textile/art-making, or body-based performance—while remaining connected to one shared conceptual framework.

The aim is not to extract local stories or produce isolated individual artworks. Rather, the workshop creates a temporary collaborative structure in which knowledge can be listened to, interpreted, translated, and returned to the city as a public question. The three processes will be brought together through shared reviews and a final public presentation linked to Banjarmasin’s 500th anniversary.

Re-Governing
Formal government, policy, and urban planning are only part of what makes a city function. In Banjarmasin, urban life is also sustained through river-based practices, locally accumulated environmental knowledge, women’s economic and care networks, religious and cosmological relations, informal coordination, and forms of mutual support that are often difficult to see through conventional urban analysis.

“Re-Governing” is used here as an open working concept: a way to reconsider governance as a distributed and contested process enacted through everyday life. The workshop values local knowledge without romanticising community endurance or transferring institutional responsibilities onto residents. It asks how lived knowledge, artistic inquiry, and public institutions might be reconnected in more reciprocal and accountable ways.

This transdisciplinary workshop is conducted in collaboration with the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Lambung Mangkurat University (ULM-FISIP), Akita University of Art (AUA), relevant departments of Banjarmasin City and Banjarbaru City.

FACILITATORS
Kenta Kishi
Professor at Akita University of Art, Graduate School of Transdiciplinary Arts
Dr. Sri Hidayah S.Pd., M.Sc.
Lecturer at Sociology Department, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Lambung Mangkurat University
Ade Asria B.Sc., S.E., M.M.
Governing board of STIE Pancasetia | Founder of nOlkecil Creative Space
Bintang Putra
Director of OHS, Surabaya
Anugrah Yulianto
Anthropologist at OHS, Surabaya
Lutfiah Setyo
Community Engagement Specialist at OHS, Surabaya

SITE
Banjarmasin City / Banjarbaru City, South Kalimantan, Indonesia

PERIOD
Thu 17 – Sat 27 September 2026 (10 Days)

TUITION FEE
International : 165 USD
ASEAN : 100 USD (or equivalent)
Indonesian : 1.000.000,- IDR

APPLICATION DEADLINE
Saturday, 5th September 2026

REGISTRATION LINK
bit.ly/regovt

*the terms and conditions can be read at the registration link.
*selected participants will be notified after the registration period closes.

Who governs a city—and how is the city continually made and remade?