Priests and Programmers
project
Priests and Programmers

A trans-disciplinary team from Indonesia, Singapore, and Switzerland has come together to investigate the story of the subak – the complex irrigation system of Bali that has, thanks to the close cooperation of farmers and priests, held the island in a balance for a thousand years. Composers Vivian Wang and Dewa Alit, artist collective U5, and architects Li Tavor, Alessandro Bosshard, and Matthew van der Ploeg, working with Adam Jasper at ETH Zürich, explore the homologies of landscape, time, and music. The project recounts how the hydraulic and cultural landscape of the subak became one of the first sites of resistance to the so-called Green Revolution.