This topical research cluster connects the Centre’s research & academic programmes, exhibitions, and residencies between 2017 to 2024. Changes in the environment influence weather patterns and these climatic shifts impact habitats, and vice versa. Precarious conditions of habitats are forcing migration of humans and other species at a critical level. The consequences of human intervention are felt on a global scale, affecting geo-political, social, and cultural systems. The Centre intends to discuss and understand these realities through art and culture in dialogue with other fields of knowledge.

CLIMATES. HABITATS. ENVIRONMENTS. follows the overarching topic of PLACE. LABOUR. CAPITAL. (2013–17), continuing to address the complexities and the dynamics that entangle the local with the global.

PLACE.LABOUR.CAPITAL. is NTU CCA Singapore’s overarching framework between 2013–2017 that intertwined our platforms: exhibitions, residencies, research & education. This open-ended research and curatorial project addressed the complexities of a world in flux and the dynamic relations between local and global. The notion of place as a locale often fades into the background, how does labour, routes of migration, and flows of global capital impact upon smaller scale? Singapore—the world’s second-largest trading port and an economic epicentre of Southeast Asia serves as point of departure to examine place, labour, and capital.

The PLACE.LABOUR.CAPITAL. curatorial framework was translated spatially by a new configuration of the exhibition area designed by Fareed Armaly. From within The Exhibition Hall, a new space emerges, set in orientation to research and education. The architecture suggested interplay of dialogues, shaping the contemporary institutional framework. Its twin entrances, set alongside the main entrance express two programmes operating in parallel. NTU CCA Singapore’s overarching framework for the year that will intertwine our platforms: exhibitions, residencies, research & education express two programmes operating in parallel. The Lab introduced various stages of research from the NTU CCA Singapore’s programmes, while The Single Screen, was dedicated to the moving image. This new spatial configuration will allow NTU CCA Singapore’s three platforms – exhibitions, residencies, research & education to unfold in different juxtaposed formats.

Fareed Armaly is an artist, curator and author who lives and works in the United States and Germany. Since the late 1980s, his artistic practice expresses a research-driven methodology that combines guidelines from various institutional roles and fields of enquiry. Through different formats, his projects spatially manifest an interplay between politics of identity, representation and culture.

Conceived as seedbed for experimentation, Communities of Practice is a shapeshifting research platform that brings forth communities at the intersection of artistic practices. Holding a communal space where artistic research can develop through interdisciplinary collaborations, exchanges, and processes of co-creation, Communities of Practice situates NTU CCA Singapore within the research-driven core of Nanyang Technological University by configuring the Centre as an interdisciplinary body and advancing its role as convener, capacity builder, and leading-edge incubator in the arts sector.