Education]]> 9 Dec 2017, Sat 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
12 Jan 2018, Fri 02:30 PM - 05:30 PM
The Seminar Room, Block 43 Malan Road

Saturday, 9 December 2017, 10.00am – 1.00pm
Workshop for Teachers and Educators
by educator and artist Kelly Reedy
with the presence of artist Newell Harry and Markus Reymann, TBA21–Academy Director

Friday, 12 January 2018, 3.00 – 5.00pm
Workshop for Teachers and Educators
by educator and artist Kelly Reedy
with the presence of artists Kristy H. A. Kang and PerMagnus Lindborg

Focusing on the artists and works included in the exhibition The Oceanic, the workshop engages with artistic practices and prepares educators for visits with their students by providing educational tools as entry points to the exhibition, and assisting in identifying aspects of the exhibition that might be relevant to their classes. It suggests techniques for exploring both the visual arts and other areas of daily encounters.

A public and education programme of The Oceanic.

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Kelly Reedy]]> Newell Harry]]> Markus Reymann]]> Kristy H. A. Kang]]> PerMagnus Lindborg]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Oceans & Seas]]> 3 Feb 2018, Sat 12:00 PM - 04:00 PM
4 Feb 2018, Sun 12:00 PM - 06:30 PM
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

What do we look at when we look at the ocean? From where do we look at when we look at the ocean? What shapes the visions of the sea, what are the sources of our personal and collective imaginaries, the references for our impressions, desires, and fears in relation to the sea?

During the past two years, a dispersed community of artists, thinkers, writers, and researchers was summoned, assembled, and brought together by curator Ute Meta Bauer on a set of three expeditions on board of the Dardanella, TBA21-Academy’s research vessel, which was travelling across various locations in the Pacific Ocean.

These expeditions were deeply cinematic experiences. In itself the boat was both a real and figurative site of projection: at once a privileged place from where to observe the ocean, the life forms, transactions, and infrastructures it hosts, and at the same time a vessel that embodied the tropes of the expedition, voyage, and exploration that were being performed.

Further pursuing the production and sourcing of images of the ocean and all that surrounds it—from its infrastructure, to the politics and cultures of extraction and management, to the observation of its social and natural landscapes—the selection of films of Liquid Traces—visions (a title borrowed from Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani’s film Liquid Traces: The Left-to-Die Boat Case film) followed the collective agency of Ute Meta Bauer’s Dardanella expeditions. The films presented were chosen by the 12 participants of the expeditions.

The selection of films has been arranged around two programmes, the first focuses on poetic, dreamlike approaches and the second on documentarist portraits of more concrete scenarios and realities. Together, they interrogate the cinematic references that shape our dreamscapes and they offer glimpses of what sort of moving images inform the common gazes of the expeditions participants, their discourses and encounters.

PROGRAMME 1

Saturday, 3 February 2018, 12.00 – 4.00pm
Proteus, David Lebrun, 2004, video, 60 min

Proteus is an animated documentary film that depicts a 19th-century understanding of the sea with a particular emphasis on the life and work of German biologist and naturalist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919). Haeckel was a promoter of Darwinism in Germany who discovered, described, drew and named thousands of new species, namely an extensive number of underwater creatures.

The key to Haeckel’s vision was a tiny undersea organism called radiolaria, one of the earliest forms of life. Haeckel discovered, described, classified and painted four thousand species of these one-celled creatures. In their intricate geometric skeletons, Haeckel saw all the future possibilities of organic and created form. Proteus explores the metamorphoses of the radiolarian and celebrates their beauty and seemingly infinite variety in animation sequences based on Haeckel’s graphic work. Proteus weaves a tapestry of poetry and myth, biology and oceanography, scientific history and spiritual biography.

Marsa Abu Galawa (Careless Reef Part 4), Gerard Holthuis, 35mm film transferred to digital file, 2004, 13 min

Marsa Abu Galawa (Careless Reef Part 4) is a psychedelic, mind-altering, rhythmic sequence of images of the underwater world shot in the Red Sea and pacing at the soundtrack of Egyptian shaabi singer Abdel Basset Hamouda. The structure of the film is based on flicker films, in which the whole unconscious experience of the flux of images is more important than the single shots. Marsa Abu Galawa is the fourth part of the “Careless Reef” series, four short films made by Gerard Holthuis, which deal with the underwater world.

Million Dollars Point, Camille Henrot, video, 2011, 5 min 35 sec

Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris.

Million Dollars Point is the name of a dive site on Santo Island, Vanuatu—a lagoon that became an underwater cemetery for hundreds of tanks and canons abandoned by the North American army after the Second World War. The site was named after the amount offered by the local islanders to buy out this war debris. Million Dollars Point juxtaposes the images of this submarine battlefield with footage of a local music video showing a French moustached man dancing and singing on a Pacific beach, flanked by Polynesian girls wearing typical costumes. The choreography of the young women seems to respond the images of engulfed weapons, they hide their faces as a refusal to see and they mimic waves, which recall the borderline between the surface and the sea bottom.

Limits to Growth, Nicholas Mangan, HD video, 2017, 8 min 55 sec

Limits to Growth begins by staging a comparison between two virtual monetary currencies: the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and Rai, the Yapese currency. While bitcoins are virtual and in a sense immaterial, Rai are made of stone and are often very large and heavy. Bitcoins are mined by computers solving complex algorithms, often collectively, working in a blockchain. In order to “mine” Bitcoins, vast quantities of energy are consumed by the computers processing the algorithms as they labour to verify and record transactions. Processor farms must labour continuously to keep the network alive. Although Bitcoin’s medium of exchange is virtual, it remains, like Rai, bound to the physical world. (…) My interest in Bitcoin was piqued by the use of terminology such as “mining” and “workers.” Trawling through various online forums, I found someone in Australia who was actually mining bitcoin, despite the fact that the country’s high electricity costs render it unprofitable. I came across a discussion taking place within a remote community in Western Australia that was established by a mining company to service an actual mine. As is common practice, the company provided free housing and electricity to workers, as well as much needed air-conditioning in the hot climate. In the online thread, a worker from the mine suggested that a Bitcoin rig could be set up at his company-funded housing in order to take advantage of this free electricity and cooling. This physical mine could indirectly provide the climate for profitable virtual mining in Australia. This situation of a parasitical economy and how the potential overlay of the physical and the dematerialised might function in relation to resource extraction was of particular interest. Limits to Growth includes an underwater video of a Rai stone lying on the bottom of the Miil Channel off the northwest coast of Yap. The sound of a human breathing through a scuba apparatus is taken directly from the video.”

Nauru – Notes from a Cretaceous World, Nicholas Mangan, HD Video, 2010, 14 min 50 sec
Courtesy the artist; Sutton Gallery, Melbourne; Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland; and LABOR, Mexico City.

“I wanted to look at this moment in human history within a much longer period of time. I wanted to place human agency within the contours of a deeper time frame and an evolving ecosystem that doesn’t place humans as the primary organism.”

—Nicholas Mangan

NauruNotes from a Cretaceous World is a video essay that contrasts the ancient geological history of the Pacific nation of Nauru with the country’s more recent political and economic situation. Historically, Nauru’s coral limestone rocky landscape has been rich in phosphate—a valuable mineral which, in Nauru, is the product of a mixture of decomposed marine life and guano deposits compressed over millions of years. In the 1920s, the British Phosphate Commission initiated industrial strip-mining of Nauru’s ancient coral landscape, selling the phosphate mineral off to Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, where it was processed into a superphosphate fertiliser used to enrich agricultural soil.
Over the coming decades, the Nauruan government allowed mining to occur at such intensity that, by 1977, the tiny island nation of Nauru had become the second-richest nation per capita after Saudi Arabia. That year, as a sign of its wealth, Nauru built the then-tallest sky scraper in Melbourne. Called Nauru House, it was crudely dubbed “Bird Shit Tower” by many Australians. By the turn of the millennium, as phosphate levels became depleted, the Nauruan government began to default on numerous major international loans and declared bankruptcy. At this time, the Australian government initiated its so-called Pacific Solution (2001–07) policy, and later Operation Sovereign Borders (2013–ongoing), in which it paid the financially desperate Nauru to house asylum seekers attempting to arrive in Australia by boat.

Drawing Restraint 9, Matthew Barney, video, 2005, 135 min

Drawing Restraint 9 comprises the presented feature-length film, alongside large-scale sculptures, photographs, drawings and books. The “Drawing Restraint” series consists of 19 numbered components and related materials. Some episodes are videos, others sculptural installations or drawings.

Drawing Restraint 9 is a love story set in Nisshin Maru, a Japanese whaling vessel making its annual journey to Antarctica. The histories and traditions of Shinto religion, Japanese tea ceremony, whaling, and global forms of fuel extraction are intertwined in this non-narrative, monumental epic. Two actions unfold simultaneously on the vessel: one on deck and one beneath it. The narrative on deck involves the process of casting a 25-ton petroleum jelly sculpture that rivals the scale of a whale. Below deck, the two characters participate as guests in a tea ceremony, where they are formally engaged after arriving on the ship as strangers. As the film progresses, the guests go through an emotional and physical transformation slowly transfiguring from land mammals into sea mammals, as they fall in love. The petroleum jelly sculpture simultaneously passes through changing states, from warm to cool, and from the architectural back to the primordial. The dual narratives, the sculptural and the romantic, come to reflect one another until they merge into one.

AXIS – Anatomy of space, Good Company Arts / Daniel Belton, video, 2017, 6 min

“With the same evolutionary effect that was followed by the ancient Greeks in their search for beauty, AXIS offers a resonating, lyrical space. Dancers are seen travelling through apertures tensioned with the happening of projected light. Their choreography establishes a circuitry of luminosity. Like a great celestial dynamo, the screen environment transmits oscillating shafts of digital dance and sound—illuminating song cycles in a cosmic choreography of light. We are each made up of photons.
Photons are particles of light. Light is inspiration. Every space has an “anatomy.” AXIS creates a new search with the human figure in space, as projected film and processed sound performance combine. Nothing is in stasis.”

—Good Company Arts

Note: This single-channel version of AXIS was created from parts of the original full-length work of 38 minutes made for 360º full-dome cinema.

Programme 2

Sunday, 4 February 2018, 12.00 – 6.30pm

Trobriand Cricket: An Indigenous Response to Colonialism, Gary Kildea and Jerry Leach, 1976, 54 min

Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch described Trobriand Cricket as “a wonderful film, perhaps one of the greatest anthropological films of recent time”
(Film Quarterly, 1978).

A key reference of ethnographic cinema, Trobriand Cricket depicts the transformations introduced by the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea to the British version of cricket, a game that was introduced to Trobriand by a British Methodist missionary in the early 20th century as a way to replace violent tribal warfare with Western sportsmanship.

The film shows how the islanders responded to a British colonial imposition by appropriating and transforming the game into an expression of tribal rivalry, mock warfare, community interchange, eroticised dancing and chanting, and unruly fun.

The Shark Callers of Kontu, Dennis O’Rourke, 16mm transferred to video, 1982, 54 min

From 1974 to 1979, Dennis O’Rourke lived in Papua New Guinea, where he taught documentary filmmaking. Made during his stay there, The Shark Callers of Kontu depicts the ancient tradition of ‘sharkcalling’ in the village of Kontu, on the west coast of New Ireland. The documentation of Kontu inhabitants’ traditional way of shark hunting, in which sharks are called and killed by hand, is combined with a portrait of their lives and environment, presented both from still images commented by O’Rourke and interviews with the local population. The film explores the changes to cultural values and traditional customs wrought by colonisation, alcohol, commerce, and Christianity.

The People’s Elect – Pouvanaa te Metua, Marie-Hélène Villierme, HDCam PAL, 2012, 90 min

In the late 1940s, the French Establishments in Oceania (now French Polynesia), saw the dawn of a local political era. In 1949, Pouvanaa a Oopa (1895–1977) became the first Tahitian to serve in the French Chamber of Deputies. Pouvanaa was also the charismatic leader of the country’s first political party, the RDPT (Democratic Rally of the Tahitian People). A supporter of the independence of Tahiti, he strongly opposed the French colonial administration and the French nuclear testing in the Tuamotu Archipelago during the 1960s. Sentenced to prison and exile in metropolitan France, Pouvanaa only returned to French Polynesia in 1968. Combining archival materials, found footage, newsreels and interviews, The People’s Elect offers a vivid portrait of this important figure of French Polynesian political life.

Liquid Traces: The Left-to-Die Boat Case, Forensic Oceanography (Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani), video, 2014, 17 min

Liquid Traces offers a synthesis of our reconstruction of the events of what is known as the “left-to-die boat” case, in which 72 passengers who left the Libyan coast heading in the direction of the island of Lampedusa on board a small rubber boat were left to drift for 14 days in NATO’s maritime surveillance area, despite several distress signals relaying their location, as well as repeated interactions, including at least one military helicopter visit and an encounter with a military ship. As a result, only 9 people survived.

In producing this reconstruction, our research has used against the grain the “sensorium of the sea”—the multiple remote sensing devices used to record and read the sea’s depth and surface. Contrary to the vision of the sea as a non-signifying space in which any event immediately dissolves into moving currents, with our investigation we demonstrated that traces are indeed left in water, and that by reading them carefully the sea itself can be turned into a witness for interrogation.

As a time-based media, the animation also gives form to the Mediterranean’s differential rhythms of mobility that have emerged through the progressive restriction of legal means of access to the EU for certain categories of people and the simultaneous acceleration of the flows of goods and capital.”

Neytal Diary, Ravi Agarwal, HD video, 2016, 38 min

Neytal Diary was shot over one year off the coast of Tamilnadu in South India. It derives from artist and environmental activist Ravi Agarwal’s ongoing work with a fishing community near the town of Pondicherry, which seeks to examine the ecological understandings and conflicts from the perspective of its inhabitants. The texts of the film are extracts from a diary (Ambient Seas, published in 2016) kept by Agarwal over the years, and contain his reflections on the complex ecological, cultural, and political underpinnings of the fishermen’s lives and their absence from the dominant global debates on the Anthropocene and climate change.

One Belt, One Road: Documentary – Episode One: Common Fate, video, 2016, 55 min 

One Belt, One Road: Documentary – Episode One: Common Fate focuses on “One Belt, One Road” or the “Belt and Road Initiative,” a development strategy and framework proposed by Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping. This strategy focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries and primarily between the People’s Republic of China and the rest of Eurasia, consisting of two main components: the land-based “Silk Road Economic Belt” and oceangoing “Maritime Silk Road.”

The strategy underlines China’s push to take a bigger role in global affairs, and its need for priority capacity cooperation in areas such as steel manufacturing.

Matthew Barney: No Restraint, Alison Chernick, video, 2006, 72 min

Matthew Barney: No Restraint documents artist Matthew Barney and his then partner, collaborator, and singer-songwriter Björk, as they film Drawing Restraint 9.

Selection of films made by TBA21–Academy’s participants to Ute Meta Bauer’s The Current three expeditions to the South Pacific: Nabil Ahmed, Atif Akin, Laura Anderson Barbata, Newell Harry, Stefanie Hessler, Dr Kristy H. A. Kang, Dr PerMagnus Lindborg, Armin Linke, Filipa Ramos, Lisa Rave, and Jegan Vincent de Paul.

A public programme of The Oceanic.

]]>
Ute Meta Bauer]]> Nabil Ahmed]]> Atif Akin]]> Laura Anderson Barbata]]> Newell Harry]]> Stefanie Hessler]]> Kristy H. A. Kang]]> PerMagnus Lindborg]]> Armin Linke]]> Filipa Ramos]]> Lisa Rave]]> Jegan Vincent de Paul]]> Oceania]]> Asia]]>
Climate Crisis]]> Cultural Production]]> Edited by Ute Meta Bauer
Design by mono.studio
Printed by DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg GmbH
© 2022 the artists, the authors, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Nanyang Technological University 
ISBN: 978-0-262-04681-7 
Distributed by The MIT Press 
Copies are available for sale at NTU CCA Singapore and through MIT Press S$80/US$60

Modeling the curatorial as a method for uniting cultural production and science, Climates. Habitats. Environments. weaves together image and text to address the global climate crisis. Through exhibitions, artworks, and essays, artists and writers transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to bring their knowledge and experience to bear on the fight for environmental justice. In doing so, they draw on the rich cultural heritage of the Asia-Pacific, in conversation with international discourse, to demonstrate transdisciplinary solution-seeking.

Experimental in form as well as in method, Climates. Habitats. Environments. features an inventive book design by mono.studio that puts word and image on equal footing, offering a multiplicity of media, interpretations, and manifestations of interdisciplinary research. For example, botanist Matthew Hall draws on Ovid's Metamorphoses to discuss human-plant interpenetration; curator and writer Venus Lau considers how spectrality consumes—and is consumed—in animation and film, literature, music, and cuisine; and critical theorist and filmmaker Elizabeth Povinelli proposes “Water Sense” as a geontological approach to “the question of our connected and differentiated existence,” informed by the “ancestral catastrophe of colonialism.” Artists excavate the natural and cultural DNA of indigo, lacquer, rattan, and mulberry; works at the intersection of art, design, and architecture explore “The Posthuman City”; an ongoing research project investigates the ecological urgencies of Pacific archipelagos. The works of art, the projects, and the majority of the texts featured in the book were commissioned by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore.

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Ute Meta Bauer]]> Anna Lovecchio]]> Michael Marder]]> Kong Yin Ying]]> Marian Pastor Roces]]> Ravi Agarwal]]> Donna J. Haraway]]> Matthew Hall]]> Nikos Papastergiadis]]> Donna J. Haraway]]> David Pledger]]> Dan Koh]]> Tan Zi Hao]]> May Adadol Ingawanij]]> Michael M. J. Fischer]]> Venus Lau]]> Elizabeth A. Povinelli]]> Cynthia Chou]]> Nina Oeghoede]]> Philippe Pirotte]]> Epeli Hau'ofa]]> Nabil Ahmed]]> Édouard Glissant]]> Tania Roy]]> Alfian Sa'at]]> Jake Atienza]]> Kenneth Dean]]> Faizah Zakaria]]> Stefanie Hessler]]> Huang Jui-mao]]> Anna Källén]]> Philippa Lovatt]]> Laura Miotto]]> Rob Nixon]]> Khim Ong]]> Markus Reymann]]> Dirk Snauwaert]]> Matariki Williams]]> Irene Agrivina]]> Nabil Ahmed]]> Irwan Ahmett]]> Tita Salina]]> Atif Akin]]> Animali Domestici]]> Apichatpong Weerasethakul]]> Martha Atienza]]> Tarek Atoui]]> Laura Anderson Barbata]]> Rosella Biscotti]]> Guigone Camus]]> Choy Ka Fai]]> Roko Josefa Cinavilakeba]]> Sean Connelly]]> Ade Darmawan]]> Lucy Davis]]> Ines Doujak]]> Jef Geys]]> Tue Greenfort]]> Newell Harry]]> Ho Tzu Nyen]]> Chia-Wei Hsu]]> Pierre Huyghe]]> ila]]> inhabitants]]> The Institute of Critical Zoologists]]> Kristy H. A. Kang]]> Susanne Kriemann]]> Zac Langdon-Pole]]> Jae Rhim Lee]]> Liang Shaoji]]> PerMagnus Lindborg]]> Armin Linke]]> Nicholas Mangan]]> Alice Miceli]]> Manish Nai]]> Nguyễn Trinh Thi]]> Phi Phi Oanh]]> Lucy + Jorge Orta]]> Park Chan-kyong]]> Sophia Pich]]> Marjetica Potrč]]> Shubigi Rao]]> Lisa Rave]]> Lucy Raven]]> Bridget Reweti]]> Hito Steyerl]]> Melati Suryodarmo]]> Tanatchai Bandasak]]> Sung Tieu]]> Jegan Vincent de Paul]]> Wu Mali]]> Vivian Xu]]> Yeo Siew Hua]]> Zarina Muhammad]]> Edouard Glissant]]> Anna Kallen]]> Nguyen Trinh Thi]]> Marjetica Potrc]]> mono.studio]]> Publication]]> Southeast Asia]]> Asia]]>
Oceans & Seas]]> Environmental Crisis]]> Sustainability]]> Indigenous Knowledge]]>
25 Jan 2018, Thu Talanoa Session #4: Traditional Knowledge and its Potential]]>
Laura Anderson Barbata]]> Cynthia Chou]]> Guigone Camus]]> Newell Harry]]> Emily Chua Hui Ching]]> Paul Feigelfeld]]> Steffanie Hessler]]> Roko Josefa Cinavilkeba]]> Taholo Kami]]> Kristy H. A. Kang]]> Cresantia (Frances) Koya Vaka'uta]]> Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe]]> PerMagnus Lindborg]]> Jegan Vincent de Paul]]> Jennifer Teo]]> Video]]> Southeast Asia]]> Oceania]]>
Climate Crisis]]> Oceans & Seas]]> Sat 27 Jan 2018, 3.15 – 5.15 pm
The Single Screen, Blk 43 Malan Road

Coinciding with NTU CCA Singapore’s current exhibition The Oceanic, featuring contributions by TBA21–Academy The Current Fellows from the first cycle of expeditions (2015–17), Convening #3 marks the culmination of inquiries on the vessel Dardanella to the Pacific archipelagos of Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea; the Tuamotus in French Polynesia; and the Lau Island Group in Fiji.

Short Provocations
Laura Anderson Barbata (Mexico/United States), artist
Barney Broomfield (United Kingdom/United States), filmmaker
Dr Guigone Camus (France), anthropologist
Newell Harry (Australia), artist
Dr Kristy H. A. Kang (United States/Singapore), media artist, and Assistant Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Dr PerMagnus Lindborg (Sweden/Singapore), composer, sound artist, and researcher
Tuan Andrew Nguyen (Vietnam), artist
Filipa Ramos (Portugal/United Kingdom), art writer, curator, and Editor-in-Chief, art-agenda
Lisa Rave (United Kingdom/Germany), artist and filmmaker
SUPERFLEX (Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, Jakob Fenger, and Rasmus Nielsen) (Denmark), artists]]>
TBA21–Academy]]> Laura Anderson Barbata]]> Barney Broomfield]]> Guigone Camus]]> Kristy H. A. Kang]]> PerMagnus Lindborg]]> Tuan Andrew Nguyen]]> Filipa Ramos]]> Lisa Rave]]> SUPERFLEX]]> Asia]]> Oceania]]>
Atif Akin]]> Laura Anderson Barbata]]> Guigone Camus]]> Newell Harry]]> Kristy H. A. Kang]]> PerMagnus Lindborg]]> Armin Linke]]> Filipa Ramos ]]> Lisa Rave]]> Jegan Vincent de Paul]]> Tarek Atoui]]> Barney Broomfield]]> Cynthia Chou]]> Andrew Foran]]> Taholo KamiCresantia (Frances) Koya Vaka’uta]]> Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe]]> Sandor Mulsow]]> Rasmus Nielsen]]> Lucy Orta]]> Maureen Penjueli]]> Roko Sau]]> Joey Tau]]> Markus Reymann]]> Stefanie Hessler]]> Ute Meta Bauer
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Postcard]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Atif Akin]]> Laura Anderson Barbata]]> Guigone Camus]]> Newell Harry]]> Kristy H. A. Kang]]> PerMagnus Lindborg]]> Armin Linke]]> Filipa Ramos ]]> Lisa Rave]]> Jegan Vincent de Paul]]> Tarek Atoui]]> Barney Broomfield]]> Cynthia Chou]]> Andrew Foran]]> Taholo KamiCresantia (Frances) Koya Vaka’uta]]> Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe]]> Sandor Mulsow]]> Rasmus Nielsen]]> Lucy Orta]]> Maureen Penjueli]]> Roko Sau]]> Joey Tau]]> Markus Reymann]]> Stefanie Hessler]]> Ute Meta Bauer
]]>
Southeast Asia]]>
The Oceanic Exhibition Guides]]> The Oceanic Exhibition Guides]]> Laura Anderson Barbata]]> Tue Greenfort]]> Newell Harry]]> Jegan Vincent de Paul]]> Nabil Ahmed]]> Atif Akin]]> PerMagnus Lindborg]]> Filipa Ramos]]> Guigone Camus]]> Lisa Rave]]> Kristy H. A. Kang]]> Armin Linke]]> Ute Meta Bauer]]> Markus Reymann]]> Stefanie Hessler]]> Guide]]> Asia]]> Oceania]]> Nature]]> Coexistence]]> Geopolitics]]> Regionalism]]> Kristy H.A. Kang]]> Kristy H. A. Kang]]> Kristy Kang]]> Asia]]> Oceania]]> The Oceanic]]> Oceans & Seas]]> Ecology]]> The Anthropocene]]> Politics]]> Geopolitics]]> Archipelagic State]]> The Oceanic, an exhibition focusing on large-scale human interventions in oceanic ecospheres with contributions by 12 artists, filmmakers, composers, and researchers who engage with both the long cultural histories of Pacific Ocean archipelagos and their current conditions. As part of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary–Academy’s (TBA21–Academy) The Current, an ongoing research initiative into pressing environmental, economic, and socio-political concerns, NTU CCA Singapore’s Founding Director Professor Ute Meta Bauer was invited to lead the project’s first cycle of expeditions from 2015–17. The featured contributors in The Oceanic are The Current Fellows who joined the expeditions on TBA21–Academy’s vessel Dardanella to Papua New Guinea (2015), French Polynesia (2016), and Fiji (2017).

The expedition to Papua New Guinea, with Laura Anderson Barbata (Mexico/United States), Tue Greenfort (Denmark/Germany), Newell Harry (Australia), and Jegan Vincent de Paul (Sri Lanka/Canada), took as a starting point the concept of the Kula Ring, a ceremonial exchange system practiced in the Trobriand Islands. The second excursion, to French Polynesia, titled Tuamotus, the Tahitian name for distant islands, included Nabil Ahmed (Bangladesh/United Kingdom), Atif Akin (Turkey/United States), PerMagnus Lindborg (Sweden/Singapore), and Filipa Ramos (Portugal/United Kingdom). The atolls Mururoa and Fangataufa were the sites for 193 nuclear tests between 1966 and 1996, despite being declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1977. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the first atomic weapons test on Mururoa, then considered a French colony in Polynesia, this expedition discussed the still neglected long-term impact of nuclear experiments in the Pacific on the populations and the environment. On the third and last expedition of this cycle, the Fijian practice of the Tabu/Tapu, where a community chief demarcates something as “sacred,” or “forbidden,” continued the enquiry on the Polynesian Rahui—a traditional rule system that in recent times became significant for marine conservation and resource management. This journey to the Fijian Lau Islands was joined by The Current Fellows Guigone Camus (France), Lisa Rave (United Kingdom/Germany), and Kristy H. A. Kang (United States/Singapore). Participating in all three expeditions was Armin Linke (Italy/Germany), who not only documented these journeys with his camera, but also questioned the role of image production in such unique yet loaded encounters.

Stemming from this cycle of expeditions, the exhibition addresses various ecological urgencies affecting the ocean and its littorals as a habitat for humans, fauna, and flora, as well as particular aspects of sea governance. Questions addressed in the show include: Who are the regulators of global oceans? Why should communities who only contribute one per cent of the global carbon footprint be among the first ones to be fatally affected by the rise of sea levels caused by global warming? Is the economic benefit of land- and seabed mining evenly shared with the impacted communities? What are the long-term effects of such industries? Who owns the ocean?

The interest in exposing the technology behind the human infrastructures is present in Armin Linke’s video installation OCEANS – Dialogues between ocean floor and water column (2017) while Tue Greenfort explores complex ecosystems and scientific production practices, challenging human understanding of and relationship with nature and culture.

Inspired by the materials used for gift exchanges such as the Kula Ring, Newell Harry documents this practice in his black-and-white photo series (Untitled) Nimoa and Me: Kiriwina Notes (2015–16), and also creates (Untitled) Anagrams and Objects for RU & RU (2015) with text on tapa, a cloth made from softened bark. Likewise incorporating items by artisans from Milne Bay Province, Laura Anderson Barbata produced striking costumes for the performative piece Ocean Calling (2017), created as part of TBA21–Academy’s intervention on World Ocean Day 2017 at the plaza in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Addressing the exploitation of finite resources, Nabil Ahmed collaborates with other researchers to call for an Inter-Pacific Ring Tribunal (INTERPRT) (2016–ongoing), a long-term investigation into environmental justice in the Pacific region. Lisa Rave’s film Europium (2014) investigates this rare eponymous mineral that has become one of the allures of deep-sea mining—the new gold rush spreading across the global oceans. In Europium, Rave also draws the often-invisible connections between colonialism, ecology, and currencies.

The exhibition will also include a sound component by PerMagnus Lindborg who recorded the land and underwater soundscapes of the Tuamotus in French Polynesia, as well as a film programme selected by Filipa Ramos and other The Current Fellows. Jegan Vincent de Paul will expand his research on socio-economic networks into the Pacific region. In The Lab, the Centre’s project space, anthropologist Guigone Camus will display documentation from the Fiji expedition, as well as diverse materials from her extensive research in Kiribati, while Kristy H. A. Kang will reflect on her experience in Fiji through an iterative installation and research process that will explore vernacular forms of mapping cultural memory and spatial narrative.

The Oceanic marks the start of NTU CCA Singapore’s new overarching research topic Climates.Habitats.Environments., which will inform and connect the Centre’s various activities—ranging from research to residencies and exhibitions—for the next three years. This is the third exhibition by the Centre, following Allan Sekula’s Fish Story, to be continued (2015) and Charles Lim Yi Yong’s SEA STATE (2016), to feature long-term, critical enquiries by artists about the radical changes for communities whose livelihoods are inseparable from the sea, the precarious labour at sea, and the irreversible impact of technologically driven human interventions on one of the Earth’s most precious resources, the oceans.

This opportunity has led to a Memorandum of Understanding between TBA21 and the Nanyang Technological University in developing academic and scientific relationships.

From 25 – 27 January 2018, on the occasion of the exhibition and coinciding with Singapore Art Week 2018, The Current Convening #3, conceived by Professor Bauer, Markus Reymann, Director of TBA21–Academy, and Stefanie Hessler, Curator of TBA21–Academy, will take place at the Centre, featuring conversations, roundtables, workshops, performances, and screenings. The event will focus on modalities of exchange and shared responsibilities, while addressing the rights of nature and cultures.]]>
Laura Anderson Barbata]]> Tue Greenfort]]> Newell Harry]]> Jegan Vincent de Paul]]> Nabil Ahmed]]> Atif Akin]]> PerMagnus Lindborg]]> Filipa Ramos]]> Guigone Camus]]> Lisa Rave]]> Kristy H. A. Kang]]> Armin Linke]]> Ute Meta Bauer]]> Markus Reymann]]> Stefanie Hessler]]> Video]]> Multimedia Installation]]> Object]]> Photography]]> Print]]> Oceania]]> Asia]]>