Curatorial Note 2025:
rumah | | panggung
rumah | | panggung references the traditional stilt houses found across Southeast Asia, drawing a connection between domestic space (rumah/house/home) and performance space (panggung/stage). The visual symbol "| |" evokes parallel lines as well as a space in between—a strategy to emphasize the suspended space between the ground and the elevated structure. In the architecture of rumah panggung, it is a space that holds a communal zone where children play, neighbors gather, and daily life unfolds. It is a transitional infrastructure that connects the private and the public, structure and shadow, inside and outside.
The aesthetics of rumah panggung stems from a functional response to environmental conditions. It offers protection from wild animals, floods, and humidity, while maintaining a tactile connection to the earth and a transcendental belonging to the sky. As architect and poet Avianti Armand notes, rumah panggung is also a structure of seeing and being seen: its elevation allows inhabitants to observe their surroundings from multiple points of view and feel secure. This contrasts sharply with the large theater stage’s logic of visibility and spectatorship, where elevation and lighting setup isolates performers to be seen, while the audience appear as one big black nothingness.
The etymological link between modern stage and stilt house in Indonesian language evokes how the imagination of the performance stage is deeply rooted in the architecture of daily life. Across the region, variations of rumah panggung offer further insight on how we relate and gather through built space. In Vietnam, the nhà sàn (literally "floor house") complicates the ground-plane relationship and resists the idea of wall-mounted enclosure. In the Philippines, bahay kubo fuses bahay (house, from Proto-Malay-Polynesian balay, meaning public hall) and kubo (kubu, a field hut in rice fields), suggesting how domestic and communal life were once entangled—long before modern housing paradigm privatized the idea of "home" into the nuclear family model.
Could these practices of housing and gathering reshape how we think about the performance stage? Could it offer a model of relational infrastructure for theater and performance across Southeast Asia? What if we revisit the idea of theater as assembly by wandering around and stepping into each other’s homes, a living space of infra-Southeast Asia? Through this lens, rumah | | panggung is an invitation to gather from the angles of intimacy and hospitality. To reflect on how individual lives are connected with collective structures, and to imagine new possibilities for socio-spatial experimentations that hold space for creative and critical citizenship.
Curator 2025
Brigitta Isabella
Curator 2025
Nguyen Hai Yen "Red"
