We are inviting you to contribute for the present Focus by Karbon online journal. The one-year running Focus will be discussing the discourse and practice of self-initiated profession and creation done by urban citizens, designers and artists included, in reacting towards everyday issues in urban public space—something that has been often overlooked as one of the feasible places to look for answers regarding problems in our cities.

We all agree, up to a certain extent, about how too many are not working properly in Indonesian urban public spaces. On how too many causes could be argued, too many parties could be blamed, and how too many of us turn our back away from the everyday urban issues. On the other hand, the utopian vision of cities, envisioned by creating the illusion about city as something “orderly”, “modern”, and grandiose—simply translated all of this time into malls, office complexes, hotels, apartments, and even the implementation of the back to the city concept—is still considered trustworthy as a solution, although it's been proven that what all of those unrequited intention has done is only increasingly rejecting our ever-thinning public space.

All the while in the public space itself, citizens are offering numerous solutions through their informal deeds. Their solutions, bearing similarities to the origins of the problems themselves, are temporary ones, exist through the aim of economic survival; a reason that often distort creativity's role in any given case. But the survival act, the very act that patch the systemic “loop and holes”, is an innovation in itself. As citizens that knew exactly about urban hope as a huge malarkey, the kind of occupation they invented would always be based on populist necessities, as a precarious certainty, without necessarily predicated by “creative industry”—a term that normally only serve to explain the self-enriching efforts done exclusively by and for the middle class.

We believe in well-designed cities that are impossible to happen without paying attention, as well as respect, to the contributions made by these very profession and creation elements. Changes and progress are still possible without demolishing what has been alive and needed by the society, reflected on urban public spaces all along. In our opinion, the healthy solution is by considering strategies, observing patterns and networks linked by the professions and creations connecting spaces and their inhabitants, in order to put bigger answers that are more humane in the future.

We would like to discuss the proposed dynamics in three parts. First, we would like to inspect further the topic on professions and creations self-initiated by the urban citizens in the last five years, which could be considered as an active response to a number of systemic deficiencies in urban public spaces. In Jakarta, for instance, the problem brought up by the lack of public space and the contemporary development of the coffee culture are answered by the thousands of biking coffee hawkers crisscrossing the urban streets and boulevards. Our contributor, Rika Febriyani, is writing an in-depth observation on them. In numerous other cities, the lack of children playing space and city parks are triumphed by odong-odong (mini mobile version of the carousel). There are still large variants of self-initiated professions and creations happening in your respective urban settings that we believe to be worth our collective inquiries.

Second, we would also like to pay more attention to a number of creations made by designers and artists that admittedly concentrating itself on the issues of the relation between public space and its inhabitants. We would pay our tribute towards the practices by reviewing them critically. Architecture, product design, public art, performance art, public theater, etc. are all in our considerations. We invite you to write reviews on other works and projects on your respective urban settings, done by designers, artists, or even yourselves; acknowledging the role of creative ideas in responding to issues in urban public spaces.

Third, we would like to examine the discourse on the relation between public, public space, and the broad artistic practice in the public space. Two essays have been prepared by us. We invite you to write about subjects that pan these very subject matters and their interrelations.

The Focus will effectively be held on December 2010 - December 2011, during which numerous articles will be published. Additional information on contributing for us can be found here. We are opening ourselves wide for your prospective contributions, even if it's still in its ideation or abstraction stage. We will discuss and edit each of them with you as its writer, in order to fully enrich this discussion. Needless to say, your response would be much awaited.

KARBON journal 2010
The online format of Karbon Journal was launched in 2007 with the publication of Focus, a discussion on an overarching theme presented in several essays, published a few times annually. In 2008, we introduced the Article page and held a series of off-line discussions and exhibitions in collaboration with other institutions. From 2009 onward, we have been publishing a new Article as well as a new Photo page every month. We hope that the latter could give us an insight into a variety of issues in a number of Indonesian cities.

With our Article and Photo pages, we wish to introduce and discuss a myriad of issues in Indonesian cities, to include cities other than Jakarta and Yogyakarta—about which our writers and contributors have often discussed. We envision a future Karbon Journal that might serve as a door to richer and shrewder debates about the urban issues in Indonesia—especially those related to public spaces and visual issues—involving a variety of view points. To achieve this, we are planning to collaborate more with other institutions. Should you wish, you might also assist us in this process by sharing information with us, giving us advices and criticism, or embarking on collaborative projects with us.

We are aware that it might take a while before a form of mass media reaches a certain level of relevance and significance and remains in the public eye. A period of three years constitutes merely an introductory phase, to test the water as it were, while a period of five years will serve as a new phase in which one gains a higher level of relevance for a larger public. From the time Karbon Journal went online in 2007, we consider it to be a truly active journal only in 2009, when it reached its latest stage of development in which the journal finally acquired the shape that we expected it to have. This means that Karbon Journal has just reached its second year in 2010. This is the beginning of a new journey, on which we will certainly encounter many challenges.

This year, Karbon Journal will clean up its act. We have a new editor on board: Farid Rakun, an architect who will be our forceful discussion partner and tough colleague. A new monthly column by Ifan Adriansyah Ismail, a writer who will grace us with his witty musings on the urban issues in relation with Indonesian films and television programs, smartens up our site starting this year. We also have a corresponding editor in Yogyakarta, Yoshi Fajar Kresno Murti, a writer-cum-architect, who will be our ears and eyes in Yogyakarta and observe everything important and interesting that takes place there.

We will still publish the Focus Page twice a year, in the middle and end of the year. Through our newsletter, we will inform you about the themes that we have chosen to discuss on Focus, and how you can contribute your writing. Unfortunately, this year we will have to remove from our agenda the offline discussion events as well as other collaborative programs. This slimming down of our programs must take place due to our limited budget. We still have not managed to secure funds from any funding agency and so far ruangrupa as the publisher still acts as the sole sponsor for Karbon Journal. This is just one of the problems that we must overcome with optimism and hard work. We will, however, warmly welcome your participation or proposals to do such events as discussions or other collaborative work that does not require any funding.

One collaborative project that we will do this year is the publication of a new page on this site, titled “Our Movie Theater”. This page results from our collaboration with Kineforum, an alternative cinema in Jakarta. On this page, we will present profiles of various cinema houses in Indonesia. This page serves as a supporting program for the yearly exhibition of “Sejarah Bioskop Indonesia” or “the History of Indonesian Movie House”. You can also participate in this program by taking pictures and collecting archives or old pictures of the cinema houses in your city, writing a profile of the cinema as well as your experience with it, whether the cinema still exists or has been pulled down. This project will allow us to have a record of cinema houses all across the country. This is an important archiving project because a movie house is a place where spectacles, encounters, appreciations, and discussions take place. It is a place of memories. We also welcome further collaborative work for the page, whether on the institutional or individual level.

In line with all the developments taking place on Karbon Journal, we have also refurbished our website, making it more interesting, comfortable, and interactive for you, our readers. We are grateful to all the writers who have contributed their essays, and to those who still faithfully write for us. We hope that all these changes will take place smoothly and assist us to present the best articles for you, dear readers.