Watch the bundengan here,

courtesy of aural archipelago:

Bundengan/Bunnings-an, 2026

Nongkrong

Two structures stand side by side: one Bundengan, a traditional Javanese hat, shelter and musical instruments made in Java, and one Bunnings-an, constructed from Australian grocery and hardware store materials. In Indonesian, the ending ‘-an’ switches a verb into an object, so this is a playful homage to making home in diaspora. 

The original Bundengan has been around the world - from its original home in Java, to being used by the Irish artist Bianca Gannon, and now finding its home with local musician Ria Soemardjo and Gamelan Dananda. It is used by Javanese duck herders as their ducks swim through rice farms as a way to control pests and insects. The duck herder would sit under the Bundengan and sing songs accompanied by the simple strings and ‘thumb piano’ that is tuned to traditional gamelan tunings. 

The Bunnings-an, meanwhile, asks what happens when traditional forms meet new landscapes. How do we rebuild musical landscapes and spaces with what's available. This improvised theater becomes a monument to diaspora ingenuity and to the ways displaced communities carry cultural memory and remake it with local materials. This also mirrors stories of other musical instruments remade and reimagined by those who have chosen, or have been forced, to live elsewhere.

Together, these structures speak to continuity and transformation. They ask us to consider what gets preserved, what gets adapted, and how cultural forms remain alive through creative reinvention. Both are theaters of possibility—one seasoned by Indonesian rain and rice fields, one imagined into being in Australian suburbia, both capable of casting shadows that tell stories of belonging.

Thank you to Ria Soemardjo, Gamelan Dananda, Aural Archipelago, Wes and Niyanta from Playte and everyone else who has helped us with this work!