Jakarta is the world’s fastest-sinking city, with 40% of its area already below sea level. Former President Joko Widodo has staked his legacy on building Nusantara, a new capital city to replace Jakarta by 2045. It's a carefully designed, carbon-neutral metropolis twice the size of New York City nestled in the Bornean rainforest. But what of the forest’s current dwellers?
The Balik is an Indigenous group that has long lived within Nusantara’s footprint. Authorities have already evicted some residents to make way for new infrastructure, and Balik elders fear Nusantara will usher their community’s demise. Balik villages are partnering with bioacoustic researchers from Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology to document the transformation of their land using sound. The audio data will enable the scientists to track the impacts of Nusantara on endangered species, and allow the Balik to preserve the sounds of the forest – a way to pass on their knowledge and spirituality to future generations – before it’s too late.
The Sound Guardians is a short documentary that will examine the ramifications of Indonesia’s ambitious capital city project on Indigenous people. As science offers the Balik a tool to advocate for their own protection, the film will go beyond documenting the bioacoustic data gathering process, and explore sound as a medium to salvage the past and safeguard the future. The film will raise questions that resonate worldwide as humans adapt to climate change: How do we move forward as our homes irrevocably change?
