This illustrated book is a poetic toolkit for navigating Indonesia’s rapidly decreasing public spaces

Jody Agus, a multidisciplinary visual artist and creative director at Qun Studios, recently found themselves frustrated by their home city, the Indonesia capital of Jakarta. Jody realised that in Jakarta, social media isn’t just popular, it’s “everything”. People are glued to their phones, no eye contact, no small talk, just “doomscrolling through the nose”, says Jody. With data showing that green space makes up less than 10 per cent of Jarkarta, it’s also one of the most mall-saturated cities in the world, with more than 200. So Jody began to create a new safe space, something that held the community-based ethics that cafes, food courts, and other third spaces in Jakarta should have, but don’t. “If we can’t always access true public spaces,” says Jody, “can we carry one in our hands?”

That’s how Jody’s new book Let This Book Be Your Public Space began. With a background in film poster design, music video production, album artworks, and experimental publishing – most of Jody’s work revolves around visual storytelling rooted in Indonesian urban life and its contradictions. The interactive art book is a poetic toolkit for reclaiming places in cities where accessible public space is hard to find. “Part illustrated ritual, part analog game, and part urban guide”, the book responds to the question of whether a book can be its own public space, or as Jody describes it: “A small space where you don’t have to pay, pose, or perform. Just show up.” The result is something exploding with imagination and life.

It’s not a book just to be read, it’s a book to be used. With dreamy and imaginative illustrations, the book prompts the viewer to go on surreal “quests” with a variety of characters like A DJ, A Daddy and even An Entity – all illustrated with humour and charm. The quests ask the reader to “remix street noise, turn market chaos in choreography, or revisit your childhood in the park” – it’s closer to a poetic playground than it is a self help manual. Jody started the book as a “site-specific object – an artwork that only makes sense when activated in real space”. The design mixes text, photography, and illustration in a deliberately lo-fi fashion. It’s light and tactile with airbrush-like mark making and vibrant colours – the gorgeous rendering of the images create an utopian world inhabited by vague humanoids where the reader can easily place themselves in their shoes. “Public space in Jakarta is limited,” Jody says. “But imagination isn’t. If we can’t build new spaces, maybe we can remap the ones we already have.”

The website allows readers to upload their own “quests” with geotag locations of their favourite public spaces in Jakarta, turning it into a constantly evolving archive of how public space is used – like green space itself, it grows. The book offers a future of Jakarta that is nutritional and shared – and even though the current Jakarta may be the total opposite, it still remains as the heart of the book. “Jakarta’s lack of accessible public space, but having lots of imaginations — and the beautiful ways people still find to gather, play, and exist — is the emotional core of the project,” says Jody. “It’s not a critique from above; it’s a love letter from inside.”