Seminar | Colonial heritage engagement in postcolonial Indonesian cities | Remco Vermeulen

In different cities throughout Indonesia, particularly young people are frequenting Dutch colonial urban spaces, whether individual buildings or vast public spaces. They stroll along the local government-initiated pedestrianized streets in Kota Tua, the historical inner city of Jakarta, hang out at former post offices which have been redeveloped into multifunctional gathering places in Yogyakarta or Surabaya through private initiative, or have fashionable photoshoots in front of crumbling façades in Kota Lama, Semarang to fill their social media accounts.

These observed developments may seem remarkable bearing in mind the colonial history of these urban spaces; if this is a concern at all for these young consumers. Other concepts to consider include the potential of urban revitalization for tourism purposes (Steinberg, 2008), possible colonial nostalgia (Sastramidjaja, 2014), or a longing for a human scale, accessible urban environment in the midst of an urban jungle of asphalt, concrete and traffic jams (Yapp, 2020). This seminar will discuss first conclusions based on an online survey that was published through a major Indonesian media platform between the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. The survey represents the first major data collection for a research project which aims to get a better understanding of the way in which young Indonesians (18-34 years old) use, perceive and have prior knowledge of urban spaces from the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia

Speaker

Remco Vermeulen is an external PhD candidate at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences. His research focuses on colonial heritage engagement, particularly by young people, in postcolonial Indonesian cities. His teaching focuses on gentrification, colonial and postcolonial urbanism, particularly in Indonesia, the bilateral, cultural relationship between Indonesia and the Netherlands. Remco is coordinator for international cooperation on collection management at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, working on knowledge exchange and capacity building programmes in the context of the International Heritage Cooperation programme which is part of the International Cultural Policy of the Netherlands, as well as for the Consortium Colonial Collections. For his previous position as advisor for cultural cooperation with Indonesia at DutchCulture, in 2023 Remco published article series ‘The story of the Erasmus Huis’, the cultural centre of the Dutch Embassy in Jakarta, with two Indonesian historians. The articles, along with short videos based on the articles’ content, have also been published in Indonesian on Historia.id. 

Moderator

David Kloos is a senior researcher at KITLV. He is interested in religion, gender, violence, colonialism, knowledge formation, visual methods, and the social and political aspects of climate change.

Format, date, time & venue

This seminar is a hybrid event and will be held in the conference room of KITLV, Herta Mohr building, room 1.30, Witte Singel 27 A, Leiden and online via Zoom, on Thursday 17 October from 15.30 – 17.00 PM (CET).

Registration

If you want to join this seminar on location, please register via: [email protected].

If you wish to join this seminar online, please register here.

Image

In the evenings in the weekend, Semarang’s Kota Lama is closed off for traffic and is opened to pedestrians. Photo by Remco Vermeulen.