publication
This essay aims to craft the groundwork for re-engineering environmental engineering in/of the Anthropocene. Reflecting on experimental fieldwork in Muaragembong, Indonesia, raises the question of designing for water infrastructures for more-than-human beings and sets the stage for retracing the colonial origins and the postcolonial trajectory of environmental engineering in the postcolonial state. It concludes with a critical review of the current curriculum of environmental engineering at a technical university.
Can Environmental Engineering Save a World of Many Worlds? Anthropocene Curriculum for Engineers
Published at Engineering Studies Volume 17, 2025
Abstract
This essay seeks to examine the changing landscape of Muaragembong estuary and to speculate its anthropogenic potentialities. Using architecture as a mode of inquiry, the river and aquafarms act as the locus of this examination by positioning themselves as sites of contestation between the state, the community, and their design that see an ever expanding,yet fragile, infrastructural development.
They all, nevertheless, leave anthropogenic imprints through the way constructed objects become a part of an assemblage of the estuary. The ubiquity of ladon, or sandy clay, and concrete sheet piles present the opportunity to speculate on their lives and afterlives through the exploration of the different modes of future fossilization (Zalasiewicz, 2020).
These relationalities and assemblages form an architecture of the Anthropocene. It is through architecture that we may unpack and discern the quality of these anthropogenic markers, and rearticulate that within the tempo-spatiality of the estuary.
The Life and Afterlife of Objects: Speculating the Anthropogeneity of Muragembong Estuary
Kamil Muhammad
Published at Proceedings of the 7th Biennial Conferences of East Asian Environmental History
Abstract
This essay is meant to be a preliminary study before the prototyping DIY spectrophotometry as a tool to translate a substance into a different spectrum of colors and to make our “chemical regimes of living“ visible, perceptible, articulable, and thus discussable. The pilot site is Muaragembong, an estuary in the suburb of Jakarta, a site of confluence where the sea and the river meet and a mangrove forest and fishermen’s housing intersect. We conducted research at the Citarum estuary to observe environmental phenomena there such as water and shrimp pollution, seawater intrusion, mangrove deforestation, and the failure of the blue economy to be explained in a slow disaster concept. The results of TDS parameter analysis of water samples for rivers at estuaries and streams show high results, also found in groundwater. Banana shrimps which contain 0.66 (simplo) and 0.74 (duplo) mg/kg of As (Arsenic). We wish to develop 'spectral storytelling', a form of narrative that we will craft from our engagement with residents who have been enduring and surrounded by aquatic pollution beyond the horizon of our bare eye perceptibility. By spectral, we refer to the spectrophotometry experiment of testing different materials (e.g. water, shrimps, and mangroves) with the residents and the ghostly, haunting stories of coastal urbanities in the Anthropocene.
Spectral Storytelling
Novita Anggraini, Indrawan Prabaharyaka, Gusmiati
Published at Proceedings of the 7th Biennial Conferences of East Asian Environmental History
Abstract
This paper explores the risk of submergence, a sublime experience of the daily lives of the residents of Muaragembong. We firstly introduce “infrastructural sublime” as an organising concept for the experience involving floods, mangroves, and aqua farmings. After describing each element that constitutes the infrastructural sublime, we then initiate the “animal turn.” This paper is based on a collective fieldwork of Labtek Apung in which the “I” appears to represent the ethnographic fieldwork of Endira F. Julianda.
Situated on the northern coast of Java island, Muaragembong is under the constant threat of permanent submergence due to coastal abrasion, mangrove deforestation, and misguided policies. The study expands the scope of the sublime, embracing a broader understanding of aesthetics as a multifaceted lens through which to perceive, sense, and anticipate the intricate dynamics of the Anthropocene era. This research acts as a preliminary step in generating a basis of art practice engaging in environmental issues.
Toward an Animal Turn: The Infrastructural Sublime at Muaragembong
Endira F. Julianda, Indrawan Prabaharyaka, Ersto Ardianto
Published at Proceedings of the 7th Biennial Conferences of East Asian Environmental History
Abstract