Fabricating Culture through Spatial Practices: Rampak Genteng Festival in the Former Jatiwangi Sugar Factory, West Java, Indonesia

Since 2012, Jatiwangi’s residents celebrate their tri-annual tradition of the Rampak Genteng Festival at the former Jatiwangi Sugar Factory’s square. Initiated by the Jatiwangi Art Factory, the festival symbolizes shifted values of the society from an agricultural to modern one through spatial practices. In this festival, Jatiwangi people associate themselves with the roof tile industry as their encompassing culture. The festival celebrates the contemporary roof tile culture instead of the glory of the sugar industry during the Dutch colonial time. The origin of the roof-tile production scheme relates to the Dutch colonial sugar factory, which turned the farmersto wage laborers. The festival implies a cultural hybridization process and fabricating both spatial and cultural meanings for local people. This paper discusses the Rampak Genteng Festival as a fabrication of culture by analysing the intersection of spatial practices in the former sugar and roof tile factories in Jatiwangi. The study used qualitative and historical research methods. To fully understand the meaning of Rampak Genteng, we conducted a literature review, a field observation, and an interview to analyze the intersection among historical narratives, and changes in the built environment and spatial practice. With the growth of roof tile factories, local people find a new opportunity to negotiate the cultural gap between local and modern traditions and establish a cultural and territorial claim of the past.The festival shows a fabrication of culture by the local people through spatial practices located in the former site of the sugar factory.