Jatiwangi Art Factory
Jatiwangi Art Factory (Majalengka)
Established in 2005, Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF) is a community that embraces contemporary arts and cultural practices as part of the local life discourse in a rural area.
Their manifold activities, always involving the local public, include a video festival, a music festival, a residency program, a discussion series, and a TV and radio station. At the beginning of the twenti- eth century, its clay industry made Jatiwangi the biggest roof-tile producing region in Southeast Asia.
The project Kota Terakota thus marks the beginning of a new clay culture for Jatiwangi, remodelling the city based on its people’s desires and their collective agreement. In this sense, Kota Terakota speaks to “terra” not only as a material, but also as land, territory, or idea.
Proposal
Rampak Genteng emerges from the experimental practices of Jatiwangi residents who transform the terracotta rooftile into a sonic medium and a site of collective gathering. Originating from the small community called The People Clay, this practice expanded into a large-scale action in 2012, when more than a thousand residents sounded their tiles in unison; an event that has since been known as the Earth Year in Jatiwangi.
This triennial celebration gave rise to what is now recognized as ceramic music: a new cultural form shaped not by formal tradition but by the rhythms of labor, the gestures of daily life, and the material agency of clay. Numerous terracotta-based music groups emerged, positioning the rooftile as an instrument, resonance, and a contemporary cultural vocabulary.
For the people of Jatiwangi, Rampak Genteng has become more than a festival; it functions almost like an Eid Mubarak, a moment of returning home, reconnecting, renewing kinship, and celebrating the evolving life of the territory. During the event, participants collectively recite the Jatiwangi Oath, affirming their commitment to honor ancestral work, care for the land, and shape the future with creativity and ecological responsibility.
At its peak, performers and audiences enter a state referred to as tranceramical; a shared, transcendent condition where the vibrations of rooftiles, the rhythms of bodies, and the energy of the crowd merge into a singular resonant field, forming what is described as the Sonic Land Community. The festival concludes with the Earth Prayer, reinforcing the deep, ongoing relationship between people, material, and place.
Rampak Genteng reframes terracotta as an aesthetic, social, and spiritual medium, transforming the most ordinary material into a sonic landscape that reasserts Jatiwangi’s cultural identity and collective imagination toward the future of the Terracotta City.