Learning Nearby: Mira Asriningtyas

Mira Asriningtyas’s new book, Institution-Making on Moving Ground: A Case Study of 900mdpl (2017–2022) explores how institutions are formed using decolonial, site-specific research. Her work is rooted in embodied practices closer to home. It begins with walking, conversations with the neighbors, and founding 900mdpl in Kaliurang, Indonesia. Later, it culminates in her Utrecht University thesis (2024), a publication with Limestone Books, and its Indonesian translation.

900mdpl includes an international residency, a biennial exhibition, a traveling transient museum, a series of public programs, and several publications. Through this constellation of activities, Mira examines how Kaliurang’s cultural and ecological values shape decolonial approaches to institution-making. Her research was conducted as a laku—a generative, embodied Javanese mode of learning—as a decolonial approach to research methodology that resists extractive or universal models of knowledge production.

By grounding her inquiry in laku while working within Western academia, Mira proposes a new vocabulary that explores the connections among local cultural values, contemporary art, and curatorial practice. Her approach is reflective and processual. She situates artistic and institutional gestures within the rhythms of the landscape and community that sustain them. The talk follows this long trajectory—the walk, the institution, the biennale, the thesis, and the book. It culminates in the launch of the Indonesian version of Institution-Making on Moving Ground, which comes back home.