Remembrance, 2026 Manifesto.

Remembrance came to us towards the end of the year as we gathered in the studio, pausing and reflecting on the year past. In 2025, we spent much of our time moving—hosting tours around the neighbourhood, showing up on stages, telling stories of Glodok to others. We’re ultimately grateful for the opportunities, yet soon after, we came to a realization: our neighbours and families growing older and passing on, landscapes of our home slowly shifting, moments and stories slipping by without being recorded.

History does not always announce itself loudly. More often, it lives in the mundane: quiet conversations shared over coffee, stories lingered long after walks, and moments and memories that are taken for granted. It is not only something we inherit, but something we are creating every day.

This reflection feels especially relevant today, in an era when momentous events are being erased from formal histories, as if they’re trying to make us forget. In these conditions, personal memories become something as valuable as recorded archives. Photo albums, hand-me-downs, corners of the city you grew up in. They are often raw, patchy, yet human nonetheless.

We’ve also seen how many stories of Glodok and its residents remain undocumented, yet vividly alive in the minds that carry them–stories of community life, cultural practices, and social change–stories that carry truths official narratives cannot hold.

Remembrance is our attempt to resist forgetting. To go home, to record, to cherish, and to honor this ever-changing neighbourhood: its remarkable past, its lively present, and the futures taking shape within it.

We are human after all. Limited in memory, fragile in what we can hold. But if we don’t try to remember, then how do we begin to understand how to live at all?