Tugu Kunstkring Palais
Opened in 1914 as the first art gallery in the Netherlands East Indies, designed by architect Eduard Cuypers. It once hosted masterpieces from Picasso, Gauguin, and Van Gogh.
LATEST STORIES
Mess Puskomlekad Cagar Budaya
Located on Jl. Kramat V No. 7, this designated cultural heritage space serves as a living artifact reflecting mid-20th century geopolitical and military communication architecture in Jakarta.
Rumah Raden Saleh
The residence of Indonesia’s pioneer romanticist painter, Raden Saleh. Built in a Neo-Gothic style, this historic pavilion represents a fusion of European architecture and local Indonesian history.
Cikini Swimming Pool
Officially opened in 1925 as "Tjikini Zwembad," it is one of Jakarta's oldest swimming pools. Deeply woven into Cikini's community life and sports history.
FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
27 – 30 July 2026 (Pre-Festival & Ongoing - Click to expand details)
Art Workshop
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Interactive art workshop held at SMPN 1 Cikini (Jl. Cikini Raya No. 87).
Klinik Tubuh Kartografi Cikini Kramat
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Doktor Praktik: Laboratorium Tubuh - Tony Broer & Wail Irsyad (Bandung)
Lab. Tubuh: Wail Irsyad and Tony Broer are theater artists from Bandung, sharing a focus on the body as the foundation of actor training. Irsyad works on body performance and practice-based research, while Broer has built an international career exploring the body through acting, directing, and studies in Japanese Noh and Butoh. View Full Details & Artist Bio →
CICI CELINE
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Rifa Annida & Patrick Hartono
A collaborative performance combining choreography by Rifa Annida (choreographer and professional dancer with 8+ years of experience) and computational electroacoustic music/generative visuals by Patrick Hartono (Lecturer in Digital Media at RMIT University Vietnam). View Full Details & Artist Bio →
Friday, 31 July 2026 (Click to expand details)
Opening Ceremony & Performances
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- Opening Ceremony
- Fragments: Arsip yang Berjalan — Flying Balloons Puppet Theater (Jogja)
- Contemporary Gambang Kromong — Tukang Tabuh (Jakarta)
Flying Balloons: Founded in Yogyakarta (2015), Flying Balloons creates performances where objects narrate and stories provoke, using puppetry to uncover human emotion through tactile materials and visual poetry.
Tukang Tabuh: Founded in 2015 by Imam Firmansyah, Tukang Tabuh is an Indonesian traditional music community that sees tradition as both a source of knowledge and an evolving space for creativity.
Evening Performances
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- CICI CELINE — Rifa Annida dan Patrick Hartono Details →
- Interstice — Teater Pungo (Jakarta) Details →
- The Swaying Birdcage — Minami Nakayashiki (Tokyo, Japan) Details →
Pungo Teater: A theater arts community established in 2023, driven by the shared aspirations and concerns of individuals seeking a space to create and develop the performing arts in Indonesia.
Minami Nakayashiki: Nakayashiki discovered dance in her first year of junior high school. Through the release of human emotions, sensations, and suppressed desires, she crafts choreography with delicate yet expressive movements that examine the inescapable influences of society on the body.
Saturday, 1 August 2026 (Click to expand details)
Community Launch & Public Discussion
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- Launching Perpustakaan Warga RW 01- CIKINI
- Performance Karang Taruna RW 01
- Public Discussion: “Infrastruktur Pengetahuan dalam Geliat Kampung-Kota”
Speakers: Prof. Melani Budianta, PhD (FIB UI); Prof. Dr. Zeffry Alkatiri (FIB UI); Prof. Ir. Evawani Ellisa, M.Eng, PhD (FTUI); Dr. Indah Tjahjawulan (FTB UBM).
Moderator: Areispine Dymussaga Miraviori, Ph.D (Cand)
Performance Showcases
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- #risk, #fragile... — Darlane Litaay (Jayapura) Details →
- Hydraulic State — Pat Toh (Singapura) Details →
- Impromptu – A(I) Conversation with the Building — 925 POETICA (Bandung) & Try Anggara (Jakarta) Details →
Darlane Litaay: From islands to continents, Darlane performs, lives, and absorbs the events of wherever their body is and moves. Dedicating service at ISBI Tanah Papua.
Pat Toh: A cross-disciplinary artist whose practice centres the body as a site of inquiry to explore labour, exhaustion, adaptation, and survival.
925 Poetica: Dea Widya and Kelvin Djunaidi explore technology, memory, performance, and cultural heritage, using sound, robotics, and AI.
Try Anggara: A dance performer actively engaged in dance performance, collaborating with numerous choreographers.
Improvisation & Wayang Performance
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- Improvisation, Jakarta, 260801 — Renick Bell (America) Details →
- Tergusur di Bawah Panji Adil Makmur — Wayang Kampung Sebelah (Solo) Details →
Dr. Renick Bell: A computer musician, programmer, and researcher based in Ho Chi Minh City. A pivotal figure in the global algorave movement, Bell improvises bass-heavy, generative electronic music in real-time.
Wayang Kampung Sebelah: A collective work portraying stories of contemporary life featuring stylized human-shaped puppets, accompanied by music in a combo band format.
Sunday, 2 August 2026 (Click to expand details)
Serpihan Tubuh Pulau Tenggelam
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Irwan Ahmett, Tita Salina and INTERTIDAL - Jakarta
Intertidal: Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina are an artist duo from Jakarta who use art to trace the relationship between humans, power, nature, and history, with research, travel, and direct field engagement as inseparable parts of their process. View Full Details & Artist Bio →
Afternoon Performances
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- Beautiful Chaos : Kata Warga — Kelompok Pojok (Jakarta) Details →
- In Flux: No Land for Mothers — Opera Aperta (Ukraina) & Studio Klampisan (Banyuwangi) Details →
Kelompok Pojok: An independent theater group based in Bulungan, South Jakarta, focusing on exploring the possibilities of theater.
Opera Aperta: Julia Mykolaichuk and Yuliia Vitraniuk are Ukrainian traditional singers who blend authentic vocal traditions with contemporary and experimental practices.
Studio Klampisan: A cross-disciplinary art collaboration platform creating spaces where artists and residents can gather to explore the body, memory, knowledge, and local history.
Closing & Medical Body Cartography
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- Klinik Tubuh Kartografi Cikini Kramat — Doktor Praktik: Lab Tubuh (Tony Broer dan Wail Irsyad) Details →
- “Seuduk, Semati” — Prodi Teater IKJ dan FM Project Details →
eRTe IKJ (Fakultas Seni Pertunjukan IKJ): The program trains actors, directors, and creative professionals, blending traditional and Western theater. Fachrizal Mochsen, a permanent lecturer, founded the Serambi Inklusi community in 2020 for people with disabilities.
ABOUT JIPAF
Jakarta International Performing Arts Festival (JIPAF) is an international contemporary performing arts festival that transforms the city into a shared stage.
Organized by the Jakarta Provincial Office of Culture in collaboration with Kolase Kota Seni (KKS), the festival presents site-specific performances, interdisciplinary works, installations, public discussions, workshops, and educational programs that bring together artists, academics, students, communities, and audiences from around the world.
Under the theme “Cikini Living Histories: Exploring Urban Space,” JIPAF views the city as a living archive that preserves layers of history, collective memory, and the evolving dynamics of urban life. Through contemporary performance, the festival invites audiences to rediscover urban spaces as places for learning, dialogue, and meaningful engagement with their surroundings.
Taking place across public spaces, historic neighborhoods, and performing arts venues, JIPAF offers artistic experiences that extend beyond the conventional stage. Each work is created in response to the unique character of its site, engaging with local histories, cultural narratives, and everyday urban life to create immersive and meaningful experiences for diverse audiences.
As a platform for international cultural exchange, JIPAF fosters collaboration between Indonesian and international artists through artistic creation, discussions, residencies, and professional networking. The festival also offers educational programs for students, emerging artists, and the wider public, encouraging deeper engagement with contemporary art, cultural heritage, and the city as a shared space for creativity and learning.
JIPAF believes that the performing arts have the power to foster intercultural dialogue, strengthen urban identity, and inspire more inclusive futures. By bringing together history, artistic innovation, and international collaboration, JIPAF contributes to cultural diplomacy while positioning Jakarta as a vibrant creative city and a global platform for artistic exchange, learning, and collaboration.
Curatorial Note
Cikini Living Histories: Exploring Urban Space
Every city remembers.
Not through monuments alone, but through the bodies that inhabit it, the routes that are repeated every day, the buildings that survive changing regimes, and the stories that continue to echo long after their origins have faded. Memory is never fixed. It is continuously rewritten through movement, encounters, conflict, and care.
Cikini is one of those rare places where Jakarta continues to remember itself.
Situated at the intersection of colonial history, the birth of Indonesian modernity, artistic experimentation, education, public life, and everyday urban survival, Cikini is more than a historic district. It is a living ecosystem where multiple temporalities coexist. Here, heritage is not confined within preserved architecture or museum collections; it lives within markets, railway stations, schools, rivers, neighborhoods, cafés, theatres, and the ordinary rhythms of daily life. History is not behind us—it is embedded within the present.
Jakarta International Performing Arts Festival (JIPAF) approaches Cikini not as an exhibition site, but as a living archive. The city itself becomes the primary dramaturgy. Streets become scores. Architecture becomes memory. The public becomes both witness and participant. Performance emerges as a method for listening to what the city remembers, what it chooses to forget, and what still demands to be heard.
Rather than presenting works inside neutral venues, JIPAF invites artists to enter into dialogue with the urban fabric itself. Every site carries social, political, ecological, and historical traces that cannot be separated from the work presented within it. Performance therefore becomes an act of spatial reading—an embodied practice that reveals invisible histories, activates overlooked places, and reimagines the relationships between people, space, and time.
This curatorial framework unfolds through three interconnected movements:
Flow
considers memory as something that circulates rather than remains still. Stories, traditions, sounds, gestures, and knowledge move across generations, continuously transforming as they encounter new social realities.
Survive
reflects upon the resilience of communities, historic buildings, local cultures, and everyday practices that continue to exist amid rapid urban development, commercialization, and gentrification. Survival here is not understood as nostalgia, but as an active negotiation with change.
Action
positions the body as a political and poetic agent. Through movement, gathering, walking, listening, and performance, artists and audiences reactivate public space, creating temporary communities where new imaginaries of the city may emerge.
JIPAF understands performance not simply as artistic presentation, but as a form of urban research. Artists become observers, listeners, and interpreters of the city, while audiences are invited to experience urban space beyond its functional role. Walking becomes choreography. Listening becomes methodology. Encounter becomes knowledge.
As an international platform, JIPAF creates encounters between artists from Indonesia and around the world, recognizing that every city carries different memories while sharing similar questions about belonging, displacement, heritage, and the future of urban life. These exchanges position cultural diplomacy not merely as representation between nations, but as the collective production of knowledge through artistic practice.
In an era when cities are increasingly shaped by speed, efficiency, and economic value, JIPAF proposes another way of inhabiting the urban landscape. One that values memory alongside development, dialogue alongside infrastructure, and human experience alongside physical transformation.
Ultimately, Cikini Living Histories is an invitation to slow down, to listen carefully, and to recognize that the city is never silent. It breathes through its people, its spaces, its histories, and its imagination. Every performance becomes an act of remembering; every encounter becomes part of the city's living archive.