Intertwining The Boundaries
Boundaries is the concept constructed through perpetual encounter of ‘embedded interest’ consisting of a multi-directional nexus of entities that define its specificity and materialisation. This process gradually abstracts reality into a worlding system that directs its formation of structure and imperatives; what is to be preserved or eliminated inside or outside this territory?
Intertwining the Boundaries is a multi-scalar analysis to redefine a notion of boundaries through a series of iterative scrutiny. Our studies reveal that complex networks of hydrological systems act as the primary flow that sustains interconnected ecosystems—not in a static way, but dynamically, always shifting like its fluid characteristic. So we make it as a sovereign agency, determining every process of boundary-making within what we term the ‘study area’—an arena where every resource is contested.
Resource contestation is the primary driver of landscape transmutation over time. Taji Village, located on the northeast mountainous border of Malang region and national park, and its surrounding environment were primarily defined by Dutch East Indies colonial terraforming, through the establishment of coffee plantations and roads networks but later self reproduced and generated into another arena that involved multiple agencies—the state, environmentalist, academics, tourist, and villagers. All of those are constituted by hydrological systems that are interconnected into broader networks of multi-layered ecosystem patches—a relationality that forms the basis for what we define as a ‘historical socio-ecological entity’, our fundamental unit of analysis.
A series of mapping was conducted to investigate those historical socio-ecological entities using GIS (Geographic Information System) into separate scale but interlinked analysis; macro, meso, meso-micro, micro and intervention site. Each scale defines the next, guiding our process through an iterative loop cycle of analysis.
This process involved overlaying multi-layered map data sets including historical land cover, topographic slopes, solar radiation, roads networks, infrastructures, state administrative boundaries, watershed areas, and stream order to delineate its basic patchy ecosystem networks. We then overlaid indicative government land-use maps such as TNBTS (Taman Nasional Bromo Tengger Semeru/National Park of Bromo Tengger Semeru), Perhutani (Perusahaan Umum Kehutanan Negara/State-Owned Forestry Company) and KLHK (Kementerian Lingkungan Hidup dan Kehutanan/Ministry of Environment and Forestry).
From those overlays, we concluded that perpetual contestations generate a three-direction ‘tug of war’ between dispositifs; intensification by academics and environmentalists, extensification by villagers, and state-imposed restrictions. This outcome is unsurprising given Taji Village's position and function as a major watershed, sustaining upstream ecology for the Brantas River—the backbone of the East Java hydrological system. Each actor plays the role differently in the opposite direction, yet their interests sometimes intertwine around a temporary, shared agenda. Nevertheless, all actors are ultimately bound together with an underlying objective; to extract more resources from this ecosystem.
This convergence agenda drives long-term degradation, steadily reducing the ecosystem’s services value—a decline caused both by direct extraction and their indirect consequences, particularly within the riparian corridor between patches, where rich biodiversity is concentrated. Ecosystem degradation followed by a cycle of process; intensification efforts to suppress villagers mobility through introduction of alternative farming products, restrictive policy enforced by the state and its agency in the name of ecosystem preservations, and extensification activities. Together these processes form a vicious cycle within a closed-loop system, perpetuating ecological decline over time.
The loss of riparian ecosystems is the central problem this project seeks to address. We conducted a series of speculative scenarios of possibilities to alternate and interrupt these vicious cycles through habitat fragmentation mapping. These scenarios combine diagrams, programs, and design interventions organized to tackle the core issues. The primary strategy involves reconnecting fragmented habitat through the naturalisation of riparian ecosystems, without excluding any actors at any historical socio-ecological entities scale. There is no pursuit of a simple ‘win-win solution’; the project advocates for an integrated approach grounded in a sensitivity to the relationality of multi-species.
In the end, at the smallest micro scale, we propose a design prototype that is scalable, repeatable, yet deliberately interruptible–allowing adaptation to dynamic and shifting contexts. An iterative roadmap frames this process as an open ended principle, intertwining those boundaries into an evolving multi-species entanglements.
This project serves as an opening for the future speculative ideas, acknowledging that history itself is the perpetual record of failures waiting to be rediscovered.
