The planet from where we stand

Choreographed Knowledges

What do you want to be when you grow up? Starting from childhood, we are taught to answer this question with a particular profession: a doctor, an astronaut, a teacher, a soldier, a police(wo)man, a painter, etc. This shows that humans are workers. If you are a doctor, wherever you will go, people will ask you about their health. Our work has an affect on our roles in our social lives. In fact, what do we accomplish by working? Does your job match your ideals? How do you choose the path of education you will travel? Does education limit or expand your choice of occupation? What is the attitude of the state towards education and employment to guarantees the continuity and welfare of the lives of its people?

This is a growing timeline developed with and for Julia Sarisetiati's research and work on, around, and with migrant workers from Indonesia–individually, collectively, collaboratively, cooperatively, and a mixture of it all. This timeline is developed with Ary 'Jimged' Sendy, Grace Samboh, Julia Sarisetiati, Rachel K. Surijata, Ruhaeni Intan, with contributions from JJ Rizal.

This timeline traces how education became a tool: To sort bodies, train workers, pacify unrest, domesticate desire. It’s about the shifting techniques of governance (be it colonial or of equals) that taught people what they were allowed to become. But it’s also about refusal—about the skills that leak out of textbooks, the rituals that resist syllabi, the know-how passed between hands. What appears as “policy” in one entry might reappear as exile in another.

The timeline carries weight—physically, textually, structurally. To read it, you might have to crouch, turn, walk sideways. That movement echoes the entries themselves: where bodies are bent by state agendas, where migrant workers rehearse for futures not entirely their own. This choreography of adaptation—of being made compatible—is one of the timeline’s deepest concerns. It invites you to notice not just what you learned, but how, and why, how much, and at what cost.

This timeline is unfinished—and never meant to be. It follows chronological time, yes. But you’re free to follow your own sequence. Start wherever you like. In order or out of it. Three entries might be enough to feel the pulse—how migration, schooling, and labor constellate through laws, loopholes, and loss. Some pieces will feel familiar. Others might press at memories you forgot were yours. Shall we?