Interactive exhibition highlighting multi-hazard research opens in Indonesia

Indonesia is one of the most hazard prone countries in the world, and is regularly impacted by natural hazards including earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and floods. Understanding these hazards and how they shape the landscape across the country — and, importantly, who and what may be affected by them — is essential to effective disaster risk management.

A new art exhibition, Satanah, Tak Diam: Merawat dan Membentuk Masa Depan di Tanah Bergerak (The Earth Does Not Stay Quiet: Nurturing and Shaping the Future on Shifting Ground) in Bandung, Indonesia brings together science, art, culture and lived experience to engage the public with these hazards and the challenge scientists face to understand them. The exhibition invites visitors to explore the natural landscape, environmental change, disaster risk, and the relationship between people and the environment in Indonesia.

Satanah, Tak Diam implores the public to consider how communities understand, respond to, and adapt to environmental change over time. Scientific knowledge derived from research and field experience and local wisdom in the Bandung area has been translated through a range of narratives and visual experiences, making it both accessible and relatable to the public. The exhibition showcases realistic and worst-case scenarios to explore potential impacts. These scenarios can help researchers, communities and decisionmakers understand where risks may be concentrated and what could be done to reduce hazard impacts.

The international collaborative project team, led by BGS and the Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), with partners Badan Riset dan Inovasi (Nasional (BRIN), Gamma Metrics, Resilience Development Initiative (RDI), Kyoto University and University of Leeds presented the opening of Setanah, Tak Diam at the Selasar Sunaryo Art Space in the city of Bandung, a densely populated area home to over nine million people.

The exhibition serves as a reminder of the interplay between communities and the natural environment and creates an opportunity for research findings to be explored through science, art, culture and lived experience, helping the public engage with questions of geological risk, preparedness and resilience.

Our vision for the Setanah, Tak Diam exhibition was to bring together scientific research, community knowledge and artistic design into a multimedia experience that engages on the topic of what it means to live in a landscape that is in constant motion from geological hazards. I hope this exhibition is the starting point for a broader conversation on localising resilience.

Ekbal Hussain, geoscientist

The exhibition is open until 10 January 2027. For more information visit the Setanah, Tak Diam website.