If There’s Something Strange In Your Neighbourhood… explores the gentrification of a squatter settlement built in the 70s on a graveyard alongside Yogyakarta’s main river, Kali Code. In 2013 the local mayor announced he wanted to develop this area and local residents have already started being pushed out. Due to the history of this place, tombstones are still visible in the walls of the kampung (neighbourhood) and ghost activity is abundant. For years people in the area have relied heavily on the local ghost buster/negotiator/expert to move the ghosts out of their houses, but these paranormal evictions are now becoming an uncanny parallel for their own evictions in the living world.
This project was first presented in Ratmakan kampung in October 2014 as an inflatable ghost house, Rumah Hantu, with an embroidered interior that was created from drawings by the local kids of their ghost stories and the film If There’s Something Strange In Your Neighbourhood…
This is an Asialink Arts Residency Project supported by Arts NSW
