ARI Working Paper Series

This working paper is an article that complements my short film, A Day in the Life of a Mall (http://www.youtube.com/user/kitlvrtf). The short film is compiled from footage from the Recording the Future project – an ongoing audio-visual archive by KITLV (The Netherlands and Indonesia), Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (Jakarta) and Offstream (Jakarta). This article and the related film explore issues of the textuality of the Recording the Future archive as well as how it can be used to research contemporary developments in Indonesian urban societies. The article argues that the archive’s feature of ‘chunkiness’ is particularly appropriate to exploring the fragmentary nature of everyday urban experience. Through focusing on the entity of a shopping mall (Mangga Dua Square), the article and film show how the urban mall is subject to practices of flânerie, play and negotiation of identity.