1830: Taman Ismail Marzuki

I wasn't supposed to be there.

That's probably the best way to start this. Because if you know me at all, you know that most of the stories that begin with me doing something slightly unhinged also begin with those exact words.

It was Monday night. The exhibition opens Wednesday. The team needed to set up the space at Taman Ismail Marzuki. Eighty square meters of empty room waiting to be turned into something. I had told the logistics guys earlier, jokingly, that Rhendi, our photographer, and I would come help. You know, the kind of thing you say. Casual. Offhand. The kind of promise that evaporates the moment it gets inconvenient.

Rhendi made it evaporate. He had a video to edit, he was tired, he was staying in, end of story. Rhendi is like that. Sensible. Grounded. The kind of person who reminds you that sleep exists and that your ideas, while entertaining, are not always wise. I love him for it. I also completely ignored him.

I showed up at TIM at midnight by myself.

Listen. I can't explain it. There were heavy tables to carry up the stairs. Paintings. Chairs. Desks. An entire exhibition had to be pulled out of boxes and assembled in the dark and the heat with no air conditioning because apparently the AC only gets turned on the night before the actual event. Not the night before that. Just the one. So there we were. The logistics team : Agus, Agung, Widi, Taufik, Mas Urip. Sweating. Swatting mosquitoes. Carrying furniture up staircases at one in the morning.

I bought everyone coffee. That felt like the least I could do.

At some point we took a break downstairs to smoke and that's when I saw them. Cats everywhere. Just living their best lives in the lobby of TIM while we suffered upstairs. And Agus, Agung and Widi had discovered the vending machine. They were completely bamboozled by it. Widi was telling Mas Urip with full confidence that it had fried chicken inside. It did not have fried chicken inside. But for about four minutes we all wanted to believe it did.

That's the thing about working through the night with people. You find out who they are very quickly. We laughed a lot. More than you'd expect from a group of people assembling furniture at two in the morning in Jakarta heat with mosquitoes using us as an all you can eat buffet.

Around five thirty we ran out of steam waiting on the posters. So we did what any reasonable group of adults would do. We went downstairs and slept on the floor of the lobby because the air was cooler there. All of us. Just horizontal on the floor of Taman Ismail Marzuki like we owned the place.

I lasted about ten minutes before the mosquitoes found me again. So I went and slept in the trunk of the car instead. It was genuinely hot there. Like a very personal oven. But no mosquitoes. I'm counting that as a win.

We finished everything the next day. And when the room was finally done, when the paintings were up and the tables were set and the bags were displayed and it all looked exactly like what Melissa had been building toward for five years, I stood there for a moment and felt something I wasn't expecting.

Proud. Genuinely, stupidly proud.

Wednesday the doors opened. People came in and they got it. They understood what they were looking at. I spoke with Anika, about how we talk about the 1830 collection, how we find the words that make people lean in instead of glaze over. Anna Bambang, praised pop singer and we hosted an event at her palace rumah kertanegara, who asked questions about every single aspect of the work with the kind of curiosity that makes you remember why all of this matters.

The exhibition is up until the 9th of August. It's at Ruang Museum Koleksi, right here at Taman Ismail Marzuki.

Come see it. I promise it's worth it.

Even if I did sleep in a car trunk to get it ready for you.

The game continues,
Oki