We are proud and happy to announce that the Indonesian soul-ceramic music group LAIR visits Oslo in April! Please join us for the afternoon event with Indonesian food and talk at ROM, and a concert at Khartoum in the evening.

17.30 Welcome to ROM
21.00 Concert at Khartoum

Lair is a music project from Jatiwangi, West Java, formed early in 2018. Lair music is inspired by classical tarling music which is explored in a typical pantura style, 'raw’ and as it is. They play on instruments made from roof tiles and ceramic jars. Lair are members of Jatiwangi Art Factory (JaF), an artist collective from Jatiwangi Village in West Java, Indonesia.

As part of the World Tour 2022 that will have its destination to Kassel and Documenta Fifteen, and their close relationship to Norwegian artist Sigrid Espelien, the event 7 April will be a great opportunity to share knowledge about the terrakotta kota (terrakotta city) vision. How can terracotta affect local city planning?

This question is of course grounded in JaFs main activity. JaF is an artistic collective of over fifty multimedia artists, musicians, designers and curators who work out of a former clay tile factory in Jatisura, Indonesia. JaF’s artistic practice emphasizes local rural life in relation to land and the terracotta industry in the Jatiwangi District. Clay is central to all their artistic and cultural activities in the spirit of community empowerment. Since 2005, JaF’s projects have ranged in scale, from small to large collaborations together with local villagers, collaborators abroad and visiting artists-in-residence who come to work with JaF in Jatiwangi as well as on reciprocal projects, where the collective travels internationally. JaF’s art praxis range from visual art to video, exhibition curation, radio broadcasting, educational programming and music featuring terracotta ensemble, Lair, all of which are grounded in material practices formed from clay.

The artistic practice of Lair’s composers, Tedi Nurmanto, Andzar Agung Fauzan, Muhammad Pipin Kaspin, Kiki Permana, Ika Yuliana and Tamyiz Ramadhan begins with the creation of their own clay musical instruments from which each sound is formed. Sigrid Espelien met the band during her residency at Jatiwangi Art Factory in July 2019 when she was part of The International Indonesian Contemporary Ceramics Biennale. She was at that point working with transfer of knowledge about clay cement, slipcasting with earthenware slip, plaster mould making and relief methods in the residency, but she also ended up singing with the band LAIR who´s instruments are made from rooftiles and jars. Jatiwangi Art Factory has been an important inspiration to the startup of Sigrids PhD project Grounding with blåleire (blueclay) and it is therefore a natural initiative for her to host and collaborate with them in Oslo as part of their tour.

The event is kindly supported by Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the Embassy of Indonesia.