KUNCI Study Forum & Collective is a 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Fellow, nominated by Qinyi Lim for the Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice Prize as part of the Vera List Center’s two-year Correction* cycle of programs.

Initially formed as a cultural studies study group, KUNCI Study Forum & Collective’s practices emphasize collectivizing study through discussion, a library, research, publishing, press, and school-organizing. Since its founding in 1999 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, KUNCI has been continuously transforming its structure, methodology, and medium. The School of Improper Education has been around since 2016 and operates by exploring the historical remnants of various studying practices in order to carve out what can be constituted as “an alter-native.” The project has a core group of forty-three participants committed to building an alternative education together through intellectual camaraderie and friendship. 

“KUNCI’s SoIE pushes the question onto us as audience [to consider] the societal norms and criteria that we place on our every day [lives] and to question if they are a construct, and, if so, in whose hierarchy. The School of Improper Education can be seen as an attempt to correct the sometimes overdependence on the colonial categorical imperative, and at the same time, [it’s] a way to introduce plurality in understanding our [daily lives].”

— Qinyi Limi, Jane Lombard Prize Council