Coastal ecosystems and communities across islands such as Bintan and Singapore face existential threats of climate change-induced sea level rise and ocean warming. Industrial development adds to these pressures that expose coastal communities to significant risks to resources and livelihood, and the loss of maritime and cultural knowledge. Introducing an on-going digital humanities project, the Repository on Coastal Ecosystems: Bridging Artistic, Scientific and Community-led practices in the Riau Archipelago, was developed under the Climate Transformation Programme. Drawing from the long-term engagement in Bintan, the project explores how such digital tools support the documentation of mangrove restoration and coral transplantation, and the circulation of coastal knowledge for a wider range of stakeholders. Referencing various onsite collaborations with community practitioners, researchers, and institutions in both Singapore and Indonesia, Professor Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore) and Research Fellow Joshua Gebert (Netherlands/Singapore), Climate Transformation Programme reflect on such platforms. Respondent Dr Ow Yan Xiang (Singapore), St John’s Island National Marine Laboratory, NUS, shares her scientific engagements with partners and communities in the region. This lecture is moderated by Angela Ricasio Hoten (Singapore), Climate Transformation Programme.

Tuesday Lecture
23 April 2026
6:30 – 8:30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Free with registration

Join us online here: https://nus-sg.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Kfm18lCzQsWnahwX6ule4Q

In 2000, scholars Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer proposed the formal recognition of a new ‘Anthropocene’ epoch, a geological era defined by profound human modification of the global environment. How might we understand this epoch through transformations of the Earth’s surfaces––the erosion of coastlines, the clearing of forests, or the accumulation of plastic along ocean horizons? What are the signatures of the “Anthropocene” and how can they be measured? Through material residues, Artist, Curator and Lecturer Wang Ruobing (Lasalle College) creates physical records of discarded objects that wash ashore along Singapore’s coastlines. Associate Professor Edward Park (National Institute of Education and Asian School of Environment, NTU) examines the impacts of sand mining and natural disasters at a geographical scale, tracing changing riverscapes and landscapes through remote sensing technologies and GIS modelling. Moderated by archaeologist Franca Cole, this lecture explores how surfaces of the earth are being radically altered by climate change and human activity and asks how we document and mediate the processes changing our coastlines forever.

Tuesday Lecture
7 April 2026
6:30 – 8:30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Free with registration

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore presents Propositions for Planetary Attunement, a live event featuring Artists-in-Residence Ng Hui Hsien, The Observatory, and Zarina Muhammad. Spanning polyphonic storytelling, moving image, live music, and performance, it marks the culmination of the inaugural STAR Residencies (Science, Technology, Art & Research), a pioneering collaboration with the NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS). A research institute of Nanyang Technological University, the Earth Observatory of Singapore conducts fundamental research on earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and climate change to better understand the dynamic forces shaping Southeast Asia and the world.

What happens when artists and scientists find common ground in shared concerns and collective care for ecological complexities? What can they reveal about planetary matters that often exceed us—from the unfathomable scales of geological time and elusive frequencies to the molecular texture of rocks and age-old modes of coexisting with non-human formations? Emerging from a year-long exchange between the artists and EOS researchers, Propositions for Planetary Attunement explores the generative potential of interdisciplinary encounters, experimenting with the composition of scientific data into artistic gestures of ecological witnessing, listening, and becoming. These explorations manifest in three acts that metabolise scientific evidence, ancestral knowledge, and other-than-human perspectives. Drifting between geosciences and creative inquiry, each artist offers a unique proposition that merges measurements and musings, interlacing the empirical with the embodied, science with speculation, facts with signals.

Complementing the artistic propositions is a selection of research materials from the NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore created for this event. This display foregrounds the core scientific work explored by the artists during the residency, offering a glimpse into the data and phenomena that informed their inquiry. Together, these acts chart a non-linear journey to the threshold of our profound unknowing of the invisible forces that shape the planet, inviting us to cultivate deeper forms of attention and attunement to the Earth.

STAR Residencies is conceived and curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, NTU CCA Singapore.

Please note this is a ticketed event with limited capacity. Secure your tickets here.

This event is suitable for ages 16 and above. NTU CCA Singapore reserves the right to refuse admission if patrons are found to be below the requisite age. There will be no refunds or compensation for non-admission.

ABOUT STAR Residencies

STAR Residencies (Science, Technology, Art & Research) is a pioneering initiative by the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, designed to foster meaningful cross-pollination between artistic and academic research. By embedding artists within world-class research institutes at Nanyang Technological University, the programme creates a unique site for exchange between creative practitioners and academic researchers.

For more information about STAR Residencies,
please visit LAUNCH OF STAR RESIDENCIES (2025-2026).

Video documentation: Ting Min-Wei
Second Camera: Felix Kenneth Galistan / Earth Observatory of Singapore

View the full video documentation here.

Videography: Felix Kenneth Galistan / Earth Observatory of Singapore

Dear NTU CCA Singapore Community

2025 was a year of transitions for most of us. As the year draws to a close, we wish you a gentle pause with your loved ones. Let’s take this chance to let the past year subside before we welcome a new orbit.

For this year’s Season’s Greeting, our former artist for the Communities of Practice residency programme in 2025, Ong Kian Peng, offered this video. Accidental Utopia (2024) emerges from a first-person vantage that drifts between submergence and the surface. In this oscillation, the work stages a speculative geography shaped by rising seas, ecological precarity, and infrastructural dreams. This in-between mirrors our present moment: crossroads of divergent futures, hopeful and catastrophic, engineered and accidental, for the human and non-human. By inhabiting this liminal zone,Accidental Utopia imagines what more can still be done. This media work was presented at Art Electronica in 2024.

Let this video be a moment of respite as we acknowledge the year past. Our heartfelt gratitude goes to your support for our Centre, its exhibitions, and programmes. We look forward to welcoming you to our upcoming exhibition at Gillman Barracks during the Singapore Art Week 2026: Kent Chan, Three Acts of the Sun.

Ute Meta Bauer and the NTU CCA Singapore team

Credit: The video is based on Ong Kian Peng’s film Accidental Utopia (2024). Courtesy the artist.

Join us for a walking and reading session exploring the intersection of art, ecologies, and local knowledge to reimagine relationships within Earth systems.

Taking inspiration from case studies in the newly published Earth Ethics: Art, Institutions and Regenerative Practices (Monash University Publishing, 2025), co-edited by our current visiting researcher Madeleine Collie, this session explores some of the book’s strategies, offerings and ideas. Through collective reading, walking and discussion we will consider how place-based and relational approaches to art, research, and institution-making can cultivate ways of putting Earth Ethics into practice.

Perrine is an Assistant Professor at the NTU Asian School of the Environment. Her research group examines how natural infrastructure can contribute to creating resilient and inclusive cities in Southeast Asia. To build her research program at NTU, she received the 2020 National Research Foundation Fellowship. Prior to joining NTU, Perrine was a senior scientist at Stanford University with the Natural Capital Project, a global partnership aiming to integrate the benefits provided by nature into major societal decisions. There, she led the Livable Cities program, an initiative aiming to understand and elevate the role of nature in urban environments. Prior to her research on natural capital, Perrine has worked as an environmental engineer in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and conducted her PhD research in the field of integrated urban water management. She holds a PhD from Monash University, Australia, and a Master of Civil and Environmental Engineering from Ecole Centrale Nantes, France.

This lecture explores localised and relational approaches to understanding ecological systems, from quantitative assessments and climate modelling to speculative cartographies and situated local knowledge systems. It brings together artist-researcher Zarina Muhammad and Assistant Professor Perrine Hamel, NTU Asian School of Environment, to discuss their distinct methodologies to environmental research. While Muhammad draws on performance and participatory practice to engage more-than-human worlds in the context of ecological crisis, Hamel will share her research in urban hydrological modelling and ecosystem service frameworks, demonstrating how nature-based infrastructures can contribute to resilient and inclusive cities in the region. Moderated by Associate Professor Laura Miotto, the discussion considers how diverse research methodologies can shape new ways of perceiving, representing, and responding to environmental change.

Climate Transformation: Sustainable Societies Lecture Series

Tuesday Lecture
4 November 2025
6:30 – 8:00pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Free with registration

Dr Aron Meltzner is a geologist by training. He is an Assistant Professor at the Asian School of the Environment and a Principal Investigator at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, at Nanyang Technological University Singapore. Dr Meltzner’s research interests lie in active tectonics, past sea level and vertical land motion, at timescales from centuries to millennia. Broadly, his work addresses fundamental questions of earthquake hazard, earthquake recurrence and repeatability, fault segmentation, fault interactions, and past sea-level change. Many of his studies involve the use of coral microatolls to infer past changes in relative sea level, which we can use in turn to infer changes in sea-surface and land height, as well as tectonic deformation. He has ongoing research using coral microatolls in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

This two-part programme activates the Geology Gallery as an interdisciplinary space where artistic and scientific research converge to illuminate Singapore’s ecological timescales. Science and story-telling, data and divination are engaged as complementary frameworks of knowledge to deepen our understanding of geological and ecological processes.

PART 1

Zarina Muhammad, STAR Artist-in-Residence at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, and Aron Meltzner, Assistant Professor at NTU Asian School of the Environment and NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore, will present their research on microatolls, circular coral colonies that serve as a natural record of sea-level change. Drawing from their intersecting fieldwork at Tanjong Rimau—one of Singapore’s last remaining coastal cliffs where microatolls were recently discovered—their presentations will weave together quantitative data and ancestral narratives, and entangle scientific interpretations with memories and myths. Their combined perspectives will compose a broader reflection on how rocks, corals, and cultural stories bear witness to the dynamic relationship between land, sea, and climate across the vast expanse of deep time.

PART 2

Amuletic Diagrams for Climate Futures

Participatory workshop by Zarina Muhammad

This hands-on activity reenvisions the Geology Gallery as a living laboratory for dialogue and creative making. Participants will co-create a compass of warnings, memories, futures, and actions, drawing on EOS research into coral microatolls as records of sea-level change and Zarina Muhammad’s investigations into omens, divination, and ecological witnessing. The resulting collective compass will be an amuletic diagram—a tool for orientation across science and stories, deep time, and present urgencies. This temporary installation will serve as a map that guides us to relate differently to the sea, honour memory, and act collectively with care in the face of shifting climates.

Date: Saturday, 8 November 2025, 2:30 – 5pm

Location: Geology Gallery, Sentosa Nature Discovery
51 Imbiah Road Singapore, 099702
Located next to the Skyline Luge Singapore at Imbiah Lookout

Ecological Witnessing: Geology as Archive, Microatolls as Record is organised in collaboration with Sentosa Development Corporation.

The public programme is part of STAR Residencies – Cycle 1, a programme developed by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in collaboration with NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore.

The programme is free for all participants. Please note that if you wish to attend both Part 1 and Part 2, a refundable deposit of $10 is required to reserve a slot (attendance to Part 1 is required to participate in Part 2).

The deposit will be returned upon attendance of both the presentation and the workshop. To qualify for a cancellation refund, reservation must be cancelled by 5 November, 12pm.

ABOUT THE GEOLOGY GALLERY

Part of Sentosa Nature Discovery, the Geology Gallery features a display curated by NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore. Through rock samples, fossils, interactive displays, the exhibition showcases the forces that shaped Singapore’s land and coast formations demonstrating the influence of geology onto our life.

In collaboration with

Coastal communities and island populations, such as those in Singapore and Bintan, are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, particularly sea level rise. Coral reefs play a critical role as natural breakwaters, aiding to defend against coastal erosion. However, their survival is threatened by the implications of Singapore’s urbanisation on Bintan —through economic and touristic development—, alongside overfishing, rising sea temperatures, and the potential runoff impacts of industrial developments such as petrochemical plants. The lecture opens with a presentation by Professor Ute Meta Bauer (School of Art, Design and Media, NTU) on sea-based livelihoods in the Riau Archipelago and features lectures by coral restoration diver Rudi (Bintan Black Coral Dive) and Associate Professor Peter Todd, (Experimental Marine Ecology Laboratory, NUS; Director, Tropical Marine Science Institute, NUS) , with a response by Dr Karenne Tun (Director, Coastal and Marine Branch, National Biodiversity Centre, NParks) and moderated by Associate Professor Laura Miotto (School of Art, Design and Media, NTU). The session explores current coral restoration projects initiated by Rudi in Bintan, including nature-based solutions, highlighting their significance for coastal communities reliant on reef coastlines for their livelihood. Returning to urban Singapore, Associate Professor Todd will discuss eco-engineered seawalls that function as surrogates for natural habitats, supporting coral growth while simultaneously serving as coastal defense structures against rising tides.

Tuesday Lecture

26 August 2025, 6:30pm – 8:00pm

The Hall, NTU CCA, Blk 6 Lock Road, #01-10 Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108934

The Climate Transformation: Sustainable Societies Series is organised by members of the Climate Transformation Programme (CTP) Cross-Cutting Theme 1: Sustainable Societies research team, Senior Principal Investigator Professor Ute Meta Bauer, research fellow Joshua Vince Gebert, research associate Ng Mei Jia and research assistant AngelaRicasio Hoten.

Sustainable Societies
Senior Principal Investigator, Professor Ute Meta Bauer (NTU ADM)
Principal Investigator, Associate Professor Laura Miotto (NTU ADM)
Principal Investigator, Professor Dr Thomas Schroepfer (SUTD)

This Lecture Series is supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 3 grant [MOE-MOET32022-0006] for the Climate Transformation Programme.

The public keynote lectures are part of an academic workshop titled “What is ‘Worlding’ in Biocultural Worlding?” The workshop probes what “worlding” means within the context of biological and cultural diversity across different disciplines, regions, and epistemologies. The keynote lectures will further explore the processes that shape our understanding of the world through the deep interconnections between cultural and biological life. Presenting these keynotes are Dr Lisa Onaga, Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin and curator and researcher Dr Margarida Mendes. Together, their lectures will illuminate how biocultural worlding unfolds across land and sea, and how attending to these entanglements opens new ways of imagining collective futures in times of environmental and epistemic loss.

22 September 2025
6:30pm – 8:00pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore

Register here

Keynote Lectures

Oceanic Worldings, Margarida Mendes

Exploring the concept of worlding from the ocean point of view, this presentation foregrounds ecosystemic, political and ontological relations across aquatic realms. It introduces ongoing research and activism on ecoacoustics, deep sea mining, and remote sensing, proposing how different modes of ocean monitoring may contribute to plural oceanic worldings and alliances in the making.

Turtle Worlds As A Way of Living, Lisa Onaga

From the adage “slow and steady wins the race,” symbols of longevity, to imagery of carrying a home upon one’s back, references to turtles appear in many languages and cultures around the world. Such “turtle metaphors” in language and material culture join a range of ways in which humans have regularly expressed themselves in relation to things of nature Diverse living things have long inspired human thought and action. However, propensities to regard nature as a resource can deepen a divide that casts humans apart from the natural world. Another perspective views humans as a part of a world where nature and culture are inseparable, encouraging a different way of knowing and talking about – and with – living things. From the earth known to Indigenous North Americans as Turtle Island, a directional guardian in Chinese cosmology, to ancestral gifts in the Torres Strait Islands, the reptiles we know as turtles, with their domed shells, have played a foundational role in holding together entire worlds, grounded in unique knowledge systems and protocols for correctly living a good life. In this presentation, I will reflect upon research efforts that initiated in 2016 to document the history of the Singapore Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum (LTTM), as the museum faced closure associated with state and city planning. At that time, the private museum held over 2000 objects turtle-themed objects (in the form of, but not made from, turtles), and approximately 600 individual turtles and tortoises – many of them former pets surrendered by members of the public in anticipation of the stricter regulations under the 2002 Singapore Animal and Birds Act, aligned with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna (CITES) treaty. The case of the LTTM and its persistence since 2001 to this day illustrates that both complementing and countering the separation of nature and culture enables the dynamic forming, maintaining, and caring of a “turtle world.” This example invites reflection on how biological and cultural practices grow entwined and embody forms of knowledge – in this case, “turtle knowledge” – and how that knowledge evolves, is practiced, shared, and passed down to the next generations.

What is ‘Worlding’ in Biocultural Worlding? is supported by CLASS JOINT NTU-ANU NTU-KCL CONFERENCE, SYMPOSIUM, AND WORKSHOP SCHEME.

The public keynote lectures are convened by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Acting Director, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University.

As the urgency of climate-change induced sea level rise threatens Singapore’s coastlines, many technological solutions have been offered to mitigate its worsening effects. In this lecture, moderated by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Professor Adam Switzer and media artist, researcher, and NTU ADM PhD student Dewi Tan will explore the different strategies adopted to mitigate urban flood risk and build flood resilience in Jakarta and Singapore, including a discussion on The Long Island Plan. This lecture will address coastal development through the lens of engineering solutions and critical artistic practices to understand the socio-economic and ecological potentials and consequences of this newest terraforming endeavour.

Tuesday,12 November 2024, 6:30 – 8:00pm
The Hall, NTU CCA
Gillman Barracks, Singapore, 108934

About the Climate Transformation: Sustainable Societies Lecture Series
This series brings together artists, policymakers and advocates with academic researchers from NTU’s ‘Climate Transformation Programme’ (CTP) and other academic programmes. Through the triangulation of science-culture-society, we hope to foster a conversation that expands our knowledge of the challenges that confronts us in Singapore and in the broader region.

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore) presents the two-part research presentation Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss. First unfolding at TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space in Venice, Italy, the research inquiry later materialises in another configuration at ADM Gallery, a university gallery under the School of Art, Design, and Media (NTU ADM) at Nanyang Technological University Singapore.

This twofold exhibition marks the conclusion of the eponymous research project led by Principal Investigator Ute Meta Bauer at NTU ADM. The inquiry started by asking: how has the slow erosion of diverse, multicultural, and more-than-human ways of living over time impacted the environments in which we live, and what are the longer-term consequences on habitats? Can we begin again with culture, to induce a necessary paradigm shift in the way we think about and respond to the climate crisis? Extending connections and conversations seeded during the inaugural cycle of TBA21–Academy’s The Current fellowship programme led by Bauer from 2015 to 2018, Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss continues to build archipelagic networks across the Alliance of Small Island Developing States, deepening existing collaborations with Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies in Fiji, and developing new ones further in the South Pacific Ocean, through the art and media non-profit organisation Further Arts in Vanuatu.

Bridging conversations from the Pacific to Singapore in the Riau Archipelago, former fellows of TBA21–Academy’s The Currentand current research collaborators artist Nabil Ahmed, social anthropologist Guigone Camus, artist Kristy H.A. Kang, legal scholar Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe, and artists Armin Linke and Lisa Rave, join Singapore-based researchers Co-Investigator Sang-Ho Yun and Denny Chee of the Earth Observatory of Singapore – Remote Sensing Lab (EOS–RS) and the Asian School of the Environment, NTU ADM research staff Soh Kay Min and Ng Mei Jia, historian Jonathan Galka, and community organiser Firdaus Sani, as they explore the impacts of extreme weather, rising seas, climate displacement, ocean resource extraction, and the disappearance of material cultural traditions, occurring across what the visionary Pacific thinker Epeli Hau’ofa has termed “our sea of islands.” Featuring interviews, data visualisations, documentation, writings, and artisanal crafts made in collaboration with or generously gifted to the research team by knowledge bearers, community leaders, scientists, scholars, and artists, including writer and curator Frances Vaka’uta, masi artist Igatolo Latu,human rights defender Anne Pakoa and anthropologist Cynthia Chou, the exhibitions present the rich, complex, and multi-layered research findings accumulated over three years, since the Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss project first started in 2021.

At TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space, the Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss research inquiry sits adjacent to the exhibition Restor(y)ing Oceania, comprising two new site-specific commissions by Latai Taumoepeau and Elisapeta Hinemoa Heta. Curated by Bougainville-born artist Taloi Havini, whose curatorial vision is guided by an ancestral call-and-response method, the exhibition materialises as a search for solidarity and kinship in uncertain times, in order to slow down the clock on extraction and counter it with reverence for the life of the Ocean.

At ADM Gallery, Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss is presented alongside the companion show Sensing Nature, curated by Gallery Director Michelle Ho. The exhibition showcases artists representing diverse disciplines, each offering their interpretation of the natural world and its intersection with urban life. Through reflection and experimentation, these works invite viewers to reassess our perceptions and behaviors toward the environment and phenomena beyond human influence. They advocate for a renewed understanding of society’s connection to nature and the land.

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss is supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Academic Research Fund Tier 2 grant. The research presentation at Ocean Space coincides with the 60th International Art Biennale in Venice, Italy, with public programmes taking place through the exhibition durations in both Venice and Singapore.

Opening Dates
Ocean Space exhibition preview:
March 22, 6pm
Ocean Space, Venice, Chiesa di San Lorenzo Castello

Opening hours
March 23–October 13, 2024: Wednesday to Sunday, 11am–6pm
Ocean Space
Chiesa di San Lorenzo Castello 5069, Venice

April 12–May 24, 2024: Monday to Friday, 10am–5pm
ADM Gallery
81 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637458

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Logo Bar

The Climate Transformation Programme (CTP)—Cross Cutting Theme 1: Sustainable Societies, under which Professor Ute Meta Bauer serves as Senior Principal Investigator (Advisory Panel), consists of a suite of programmes that form a synergistic relay of interdisciplinary research and external outreach. The initiatives aim to cultivate a critical multiplicity of voices, perspectives, knowledges from both within and outside academic realms in the formation of ‘Sustainable Societies’ that engage with questions of climate change.

The Climate Transformation Programme is led by Professor Adam Switzer (Professor, Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University). The CTP aims to develop, inspire and accelerate knowledge-based solutions and educate future leaders to establish the stable climate and environment necessary for resilient, just, and sustainable Southeast Asian societies.

Key Research Outputs

Climate Transformation: Sustainable Societies Lecture Series Cycle 1 and 2
Climate Transformation Tuesday Gatherings Cycle 1 and 2

Climate Transformation: Sustainable Societies Lecture Series Cycle 1 (November 2024–May 2025) and Cycle 2 (August 2025–April 2026)
Climate Transformation Gatherings Cycle 1 (November 2024–May 2025) and Cycle 2 (August 2025–May 2026)
Repository on Coastal Ecosystems: Bridging Artistic, Scientific and Community-Led Practices in the Riau Archipelago

Research Publications

Jamil, J and Gebert, J. V. (2026, October) Where Nipa Grows, the Mangrove Lives: Orang Suku Laut, Kawal, and the Politics of Three Plants. Madeleine Collie (CTP Visiting Researcher) and Yvonne Billimore (eds.), Follow the Plants. Preorder here

This project examines how climate crisis and cultural loss interconnect. The core objective is the co-production of knowledge that can lead to a changed understanding of environmental justice, which, in turn, will suggest changes in existing legal and policy frameworks. The project hypothesises that a fundamental connection between people and their environments has been lost in contemporary urban contexts, resulting in feelings of indifference towards the climate crisis or unexplained feelings of climate anxiety.

It deploys a research team with transdisciplinary methods to build on emerging environmental jurisprudence in the Pacific region and produce narrative visualisations demonstrating the links between cultural loss and climate change. By combining scholarly knowledge with cultural and artistic practices, the project will develop an innovative framework for addressing the impact of accelerated climate change. Using tools from visual studies and forensic architecture, from ethnography and law, to make scientific evidence on climate change socially robust and impactful, it will also create a relay between local perspectives and knowledge generated in different academic fields. Data visualisation and audiovisual presentations of ecological and cultural loss will be instrumental to transform ecological grief and loss into catalysts for climate action. Such narrative visualisations make visible the necessity to re-establish a direct relation between human societies and the environment, especially in the rapidly-changing urban fabric of a metropolis like Singapore.

Research Outputs

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Research Presentation, 23 March–13 October 2024, TBA21-Academy Ocean Space, Venice, Italy

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Research Presentation, 12 April–24 May 2024, ADM Gallery, 81 Nanyang Drive, Singapore

Special Issue: Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss (Vol. XXVII, 2024), Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific (CLJP), Victoria University of Wellington

Research Publications:

Ahmed, N., Bauer, U. M., & Lallemant-Moe, H. R. (2024, October). Introductions to Cultural loss and climate change. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, Special Issue: Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss.

Ahmed, N., Camus, G., Lallemant-Moe, H. R., & Rave, L. (2022, November). Cultural loss and climate change – A new field of research. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, 28.

Soh, K. M. (2024, May). Monsoon equinox. Issue 13: Weather. LASALLE College of the Arts.

Shaleh, A. (2024, October). Linking the commons and climate change to collective actions. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, Special Issue: Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss.

25 Jun 2016, Sat 2:00pm – 7:00pm Gillman Barracks

We have an array of exciting activities planned for the upcoming Art Day Out! x The School Holidays at Gillman Barracks on Saturday, 25 June. From exhibition tours of SEA STATE, animation screenings by NTU ADM students, to creating your own fizzy drinks in a workshop by Artist-in-Residence Julian ‘Togar’ Abraham – there is something for all ages!

anime
2.00 – 7.00pm
The Seminar Room, Block 43 Malan Road

For Gillman Barracks’ Art Day Out! x The School Holidays, NTU CCA Singapore presents a variety of short animations made by the students of Nanyang Technological University’s School of Art, Design and Media (NTU ADM), selected by Kathrin Albers, Assistant Professor, NTU ADM.

Screening list:

1. Princess (2014)
2D Hand-drawn Animation, Mandarin with English Subtitles, 7:07 mins.
By Andre Quek, Abdul Hadi Bin Abdul Wahab and Vivien Tan. Courtesy of the artists and NTU ADM.

2. MiMo (2014)
Abstract Animation, No Dialogue, 1:43 mins.
By Chang Pei Yee and Oon Qian Yi Shannon. Courtesy of the artists and NTU ADM.

3. Hand-Made (2012)
Stopmotion Paper cut Animation, No Dialogue, 2:18 mins.
By Goh Wei Choon and Jiahui. Courtesy of the artists and NTU ADM.

4. Innocent Memory (2012)
2D Hand Drawn and Painted Animation, No Dialogue, 3:24 mins.
By Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong. Courtesy of the artist and NTU ADM.

5. Bubble (2014)
3D Animation, No Dialogue, 5:40 mins.
By Lam Yee Shing, Quek Yu Lin and Poh Ya Ching. Courtesy of the artists and NTU ADM.

6. 1997 (2014)
2D Flash Animation, No Dialogue, 7:32 mins.
By Goh Wei Choon and Jia Hui Wee. Courtesy of the artists and NTU ADM.

7. The Octopus Lady (2015)
2D Animation, No Dialogue, 3:34 mins.
By Amanda Wang Ziyan. Courtesy of the artist and NTU ADM.

8. La Laine Des Moutons (2012)
2D Animation, French with English Subtitles, 5:53 mins.
By Kapie and Tran Nguyen Tuan Anh. Courtesy of the artists and NTU ADM.

9. Autogenic (2014)
Abstract 3D Animation to music, 3:45 mins.
By Prakash. Courtesy of the artists and NTU ADM.

Curator Tours of SEA STATE
2.00pm: Led by Syaheedah Iskandar, Curatorial Assistant, NTU CCA Singapore
4.00pm: Led by Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, curator, SEA STATE and Senior Curator, National Gallery Singapore
The Exhibition Hall, Block 43 Malan Road

Join our curator-led tours of the exhibition SEA STATE by artist Charles Lim Yi Yong. Commissioned for the Singapore Pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale, SEA STATE examines the biophysical, political and psychic contours of Singapore through the visible and invisible lenses of the sea. It is an in-depth inquiry by an artist that scrutinises both man-made systems, opening new perspectives on our everyday surroundings, from unseen landscapes and disappearing islands to the imaginary boundaries of a future landmass.

Workshop for kids and teens: Make your own Soda Pop
3.00 – 4.00pm
Studio #01-02, Block 37 Malan Road

Learn to make your own Soda Pop in a workshop with Artist-in-Residence Julian ‘Togar’ Abraham. Open to ages nine and above, concoct your very own fizzy drink using fruits in a healthy, organic fermentation process!

Please RSVP to NTUCCAResidencies@ntu.edu.sg and bring some fruit to flavour your Soda Pop!

Join us for an afternoon of drawing, walking, and inquiry inspired by the exhibition, Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, this drawing club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to probe how architectural drawings can unearth the more inconspicuous matters of climate change. In this session, we’ll explore how architectural drawing can be a critical tool to visualise the unseen externalities of deep-sea mining, land reclamation, sand exports, and marine geopolitics—especially in Singapore and its neighbouring shores where earth extraction meets fragile ecosystems.

This Drawing Club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to present their annotated sketches at the NTU ADM Foyer from July to August 2025.

No technical drawing experience needed—just a willingness to trace complexity.
Participants are encouraged to bring dry drawing media (markers, found images, etc) and reading references (articles, books, etc) to share, annotate, and get inspiration from during the session.

DATE
Saturday, 24 May 2025
3:00pm – 5:00pm

VENUE
ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458

EXHIBITION DATES
28 April to 13 June 2025
Open by appointment from 14 June to 15 August 2025

GALLERY HOURS
Monday to Friday: 10:00am to 5:00pm
Saturday: By appointment only
Closed on Sunday and Public Holidays

EMAIL
ADMgallery@ntu.edu.sg

DESIGN EARTH‘s latest project is a series of fables that addresses the elephant in the room—the climate crisis—by animating charismatic figures from natural history museums. This design research identifies and leverages figures from the collections all while unsettling the museum apparatus—the devices, archives, histories, and audiences. Some such figures include a taxidermy of an African matriarch elephant, the skeleton of a stranded blue whale, and a composite structure of a Diplodocuscarnegii. The fragmentary remains of such creatures are animated, brought back to life, so to speak in rhyming verse, colorful imagery, and with some poignant humor. These speculative afterlives stir up potent trouble on the breath-taking capture of life in the Anthropocene to ask how cultural institutions may be responsible to calls for decolonisation and decarbonisation. In Singapore, this hands-on, participatory workshop will focus on the cultural prehistory, present, and speculative futures of the Singapore saltwater (estuarine) crocodile and the Malayan tiger. Facilitated by Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy, and DESIGN EARTH team member Kelly Koh. Beginning with the Artist Talk on 13 June, participants will engage in DESIGN EARTH creative methodologies including site visits and the building of a research archive while looking into the facts and fictions of these creatures and their homes.

For registration, please visit here.

DESIGN EARTH was founded by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy in 2011. The design research practice deploys the speculative project—drawing and narrative—to make public the climate crisis. Their work has been featured internationally—most recently at Venice Biennale, Bauhaus Museum Dessau, SFMOMA, Milano Triennale—and is in the New York Museum of Modern Art permanent collection. Ghosn and Jazairy are authors of Geographies of Trash (2015); Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment (3rd ed. 2022), The Planet After Geoengineering (2021) and Climate Inheritance (2023). DESIGN EARTH has been recognized with several awards, including United States Artist Fellowship, Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Faculty Design Awards, and Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Awards.

Rania Ghosn (Beirut, b. 1977) is Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS) in Urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. El Hadi Jazairy (Algeria, b. 1970) is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of Master of Urban Design degree program at the University of Michigan.

Join DESIGN EARTH co-founders and co-directors Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy for their first presentation in Singapore, where they will share insights into their collaborative research practice centred on the speculative architectural project as a mode of making the climate crisis public. Their design research brings together spatial history, geographic representation, projective design, and material public assemblies to speculate on ways of living with legacy technologies on a damaged planet. Recipients of the United States Artist Fellowship and the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers, among other honors, Ghosn and Jazairy have made a practice of telling complex and unwieldy stories of the Earth. Learn more about their ongoing explorations of visual and spatial storytelling.

Friday, 13 June 2025
6:30 – 8:30 pm

The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
6 Lock Rd, #01-09/10 Gillman Barracks 108934

Free registration here.

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and the European Union Delegation to Singapore are pleased to present the exhibition Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, Vuth Lyno: New Works. The exhibition marks the culmination of the first cycle of SEA AiR—Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artists in the European Union (SEA AiR). As participating artists in the inaugural cycle of SEA AiR, Hoo Fan Chon (Malaysia), Citra Sasmita (Indonesia), and Vuth Lyno (Cambodia) have each been awarded a three-month-long residency at an art institution in Europe as well as funding for the creation of artworks.

Stemming out of a year-long engagement, Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, Vuth Lyno: New Works is the outcome of a multifaceted process made of journeys and institutional collaborations, fieldwork and encounters, research and artmaking.

In the first half of 2022, amidst unrelenting surges of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the artists took off from their home countries to conduct three-month-long residencies: Hoo Fan Chon at HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme (Finland); Citra Sasmita at WIELS (Brussels, Belgium); and Vuth Lyno at Villa Arson (Nice, France). The artworks featured in the exhibition Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, Vuth Lyno: New Works have been created by the artists in the months following their residencies, a much-needed time for critical reflection and material experimentation that allowed them to develop their research findings and creative inspiration into full-fledged artworks. Ranging from installation and video to sculpture and painting, some of these works also mark these artists’ first attempts at embracing new mediums and materials: 3D animation techniques for Hoo Fan Chon, video for Citra Sasmita, and paper for Vuth Lyno. Most importantly, they bear witness to how the artists’ interests in the cosmetics of food, cultural contaminations, decolonial practices, the empowerment of women, and the resilience of marginalised communities, have evolved over the last year.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio, Assistant Director (Programmes), and NTU CCA Singapore. The project leader of SEA AiR is Ute Meta Bauer Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University.

SEA AiR—Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artists in the European Union is funded by the European Union.

How might the architectural imagination make sense of the Earth at a moment in which the planet is presented in crisis? For Design Earth, imagination fuels the production of stories and images that come together as geographically situated speculations—neither documentary nor completely fictional.

Today we live in an epoch shaped by extensive shifts in industrialization, with environmental risks and destruction felt at a planetary scale. Paradoxically, while the threats are serious, we remain little mobilized—in part because of the “abysmal distance between our little selfish human worries and the great questions of ecology.”^[1] If we are worried once again that the sky may be falling on our heads, how is it that we have done so little about it? In this light, the environmental crisis can be seen not only as a crisis of the physical and technological environments; it is also a crisis of the cultural environment—of the modes of representation through which society relates to the complexity of environmental systems.

Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate springs from the conviction that climate change demands urgent transformations in the ways we care for and design the Earth, moving away from a visual rhetoric of crisis that aestheticizes calamity. Design Earth, a research practice founded and led by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy engages the medium of the speculative architectural project to make public the climate crisis. Their design research brings together spatial history, geographic representation, projective design, and material public assemblies to speculate on ways of living with legacy technologies on a damaged planet. This work is developed simultaneously through the medium of drawing and the creation of books, two of which are excerpted and put in conversation in this art exhibition.

The first book, Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment (Actar Publishers, 2018), is a manifesto for environmental imagination in twelve architectural projects engaging the planetary scale through drawing divided by the organising principles of Aquarium, Terrarium, and Planetarium. This exhibition highlights three chapters from the larger work, each addressing a planetary common as matter of concern – the atmosphere, deep seabed, outer space: After Oil (2016), Pacific Aquarium (2016), and Cosmorama (2018). It examines geographies of extractive technological systems, foregrounding externalities as political concerns for architecture. Geographic portraits employing axonometry, sections, and split-level views describe the political and ethical implications of our ecological actions while speculating on survival and adaptation strategies that invite us to make sense of the Earth envision it in ways that generate inquisitive, delightful, and potentially subversive responses.

The second book, The Planet After Geoengineering (Actar Publishers, 2021) is a graphic novel which imagines the worlds of climate modification technologies and their controversies. It thinks with and against geoengineering – technologies that counteract the effects of anthropogenic climate change by deliberately intervening in Earth systems as a form of planetary management. In five chapters, The Planet After Geoengineering assembles a planetary section that cuts through the underground, crust, atmosphere, and outer space. Each geostory— Petrified Carbon, Arctic Albedo, Sky River, Sulfur Storm, and Dust Cloud—depicts possible future Earths that we come to inhabit on the heels of a geoengineering intervention all while situating such promissory visions within a genealogy of climate-control projects from nineteenth-century rainmaking machines and volcanic eruptions to
Cold War military plans.

Together these projects help us begin to address the open question of how (else) could we tell the story of the Earth? Beyond the binaries of the preservation of a Blue Marble and the promises of technological solutionism, what geostories can we imagine or envision?

^[1] Laura Collins-Hughes, “A Potential Disaster in Any Language: ‘Gaïa Global Circus’ at the Kitchen,” New York Times, September 25, 2014.

Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate is co-organised by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art and ADM Gallery

OPENING RECEPTION

Friday, 25 April 2025
6:30 – 8:30 pm

VENUE

ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458

DATES

28 April to 13 June 2025
Open by appointment from 14 June to 15 August 2025

GALLERY HOURS

Monday to Friday: 10:00am to 5:00pm
Saturday: By appointment only
*Closed on Sunday and Public Holidays

EMAIL

ADMgallery@ntu.edu.sg

Public Programmes

DESIGN EARTH Artist Talk: Geostories

Friday, 13 June 2025, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

The Hall, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
6 Lock Rd, #01-09/10 Gillman Barracks 108934

DESIGN EARTH Workshop: Elephant in the Room and Other Creatures

13 – 19 June 2025

The Hall, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
6 Lock Rd, #01-09/10 Gillman Barracks 108934

Curator’s Exhibition (de)Tour

Join NTU CCA Singapore Director Karin G. Oen for a closer look at the collaborative practice of DESIGN EARTH, including drawing, writing, animation, and sound components of Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate. Explore the research and influences that comprise these multi-layered artworks, from the terrestrial principles of geoengineering and petroleum geology, to the supranational domains of the deep seabeds and outer space. Highlighting the long traditions of poetry, science fiction, and image creation that help us to conceptualise these realms, we will consider what it means to tell the stories of the earth, and to live with unsightly “externalities.”

Saturday, 17 May 2025
11:00 am – 12:00 pm

ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458

Student-Led Exhibition (de)Tour

Join Vaishnavi Peddapalli, NTU School of Humanities Class of 2025, for a student-led (de)tour of Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate that will explore how speculative fiction can reconsider Southeast Asian geographical catastrophes borne from human intervention. Considering localised discourse around climate change and its impact on younger generations, this experience provides space for speculation for our planet’s future.

Saturday, 31 May 2025
11:00 am – 12:00 pm

ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458

Pacific Aquarium Drawing Club

Come walk, draw, and speculate. Drawing as a visual and creative practice can also be a tool for scientific inquiry and speculation. Plotting detailed lines can help process the larger picture of the distanced and abstracted planet crisis. Inspired by the exhibition, Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, this drawing club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to probe how architectural drawings can unearth the more inconspicuous matters of climate change. Facilitated by Eunice Lacaste, Programme Associate, NTU CCA Singapore.

This Drawing Club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to present their annotated sketches at the NTU ADM Foyer from July to August 2025.

No technical drawing experience needed—just a willingness to trace complexity. Participants are encouraged to bring dry drawing media (markers, found images, etc) and reading references (articles, books, etc) to share, annotate, and get inspiration from during the session.

Saturday, 24 May 2025
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458

Drawing Dialogues: Stories of Decay

Decay, decomposition, weathering, rot. Landscapes eroding, architectures disintegrating, bodies breaking down, coming apart, becoming dirt. We hardly have a kinship with decay for, like dirt, decay is—in the words of anthropologist Mary Douglas—matter out-of-place in our perpetually renewing cities. Indeed, the city we are brought to inhabit and desire is built with ever-more weatherproof architectures, with cosmetic treatments that maintain the hardness of the buildings and the smoothness of their surfaces impervious to the traces of Nature’s time. In waterfront cities, which novelist Amitav Ghosh regards as a showcase of architectural mastery over the unruly environment, the cartography of terrestrial edges continues to reinforce the separation of interiorised human-made worlds from exteriorised more-than-human environment. Seen through the lens of the city, the design of the future Earth aspires to be atemporal. And like so many transient and shifting environments stilled in human projections of the Earth (from maps to masterplans), the “unweathered” city must thrive outside of time, devoid of stains and discolouration. But does the city have to be in an anxious race against Nature’s time?

Created and led by Superlative Futures, Drawing Dialogues: Stories of Decay is a workshop for re-attuning our urban selves to Nature’s time. The programme focuses on rethinking the place of decay in the wellbeing of cities and on re-presenting stories of decay as matters of care. The workshop will start off with a walk in the Berlayer Creek—a rare remnant of Singapore’s mangrove histories once denigrated as a place of dankness and disease—where participants will be led to uncover stories of decay and gather thoughts and materials of decomposition. The second part of the workshop will take place at NTU CCA Singapore where, drawing and dialoguing with decay, participants will be guided to create their own narratives and landscapes of decay culminating in a collaborative artwork. Expanding on Superlative Futures’ speculative design research on new ecological practices for weathering the future city, this workshop marks the beginning of a propositional archive—A Cartography of Decay—that charts different relationships between decay and the city.

It is recommended to bring water, sunblock, umbrella, mosquito repellent, and notetaking materials (e.g. pencil/pen and paper). This is a rain or shine event.

This event is a public programme created in response to the exhibition Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, on view by appointment at NTU ADM Gallery 2 until 15 August 2025.

This programme is free with registration. Limited capacity.

Workshop Schedule

9:00 – 10:00am
Meet at Labrador Park MRT, Exit A
Move as a group to Berlayer Creek

10:30am – 12:00pm
Drawing session at The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore

Letters from a Future Earth

This workshop will revolve around The Planet After Geoengineering(2021), a graphic animation by Design Earth, where planetary imaginaries unfold through narrative fragments and visual speculation. Responding to the animation, participants will be prompted to ponder over climate change, environmental design, and planetary care and compose letters and/or postcards from a future Earth. In creating memories of futures yet to be experienced, participants are asked to time-travel into future climates and channel perspectives from the human and other-than-human inhabitants of the Earth to come. The workshop will culminate in a final sharing session where participants will be invited to present their pieces, exchange insights, and reflect on the power of storytelling. In closing, the group will consider how such narratives might shape our actions in the present.

The workshop seeks to make the immediacy of climate change tangible, not only intellectually, but also emotionally by foregrounding personal visions and speculative storytelling with letters serving as intimate vessels for messages of loss, change, and resilience.

We welcome the general public as well as creatives, artists, writers, architects, designers, students, and everyone interested in the topic of climate change. Suitable for all writing skill levels.

This workshop is facilitated by Leila Vignozzi, Intern, NTU CCA Singapore.

Saturday, 5 July 2025
2:00 – 4:00pm

The Hall, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
6 Lock Rd, #01-09/10 Gillman Barracks 108934

Cosmorama Drawing Club

Inspired by Cosmorama (2018), one of four sections in the exhibition Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate, this third Drawing Club invites artists, architects, designers, and students to respond to the geostories of asteroid mining, orbital debris, and climate refuge in the age of the “New Space.”

The workshop zooms in on architectural drawing as practice to examine planetary issues such as satellite debris and airspace conflicts, that may seem distant from us. Participants will trace the macrocosmic consequences of extractive economies and of their politics beyond Singapore, and beyond the Earth itself, launching critical conversations into speculative drawings.

The annotated sketches produced during the workshop will be displayed at the NTU ADM Foyer until 13 August 2025, alongside the works produced at the previous Drawing Club.

Participants are encouraged to bring dry drawing media (markers, found images, etc) and reading references (articles, books, etc) to share, annotate, and get inspiration from during the session. No technical drawing experience needed.

This workshop is facilitated by Eunice Lacaste, Programmes Associate, NTU CCA Singapore.

Thursday, 7 August 2025. 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

ADM Gallery 2
NTU School of Art, Design and Media
81 Nanyang Dr, Singapore 637458

Over the past decade, deep-sea minerals like polymetallic nodules containing copper and cobalt have gained attention as a potential resource for green energy technologies such as batteries, computers, and electric cars. Found mainly on the international seabed, these nodules are regulated by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which will finalize a mining code in 2025 that determines future deep-sea exploration and exploitation. Following Singapore’s Deep-Sea Mining Act of 2015, Ocean Mineral Singapore, a subsidiary of Keppel Offshore and Marine conducted two deep-sea expeditions to the Pacific Ocean. While some argue this extraction is crucial for the green transition, Pacific nations warn of its harmful impact on marine biodiversity and climate change.

This lecture will explore the environmental and societal implications of deep-sea mining, starting with a screening of the film Blue Peril, 2022 (INTERPRT / Professor Nabil Ahmed, Deep Sea Mining Campaign & Ozeanian Dialog), a science-based visual investigation using architectural and spatial analysis to model the potentially irreversible effects of deep-sea mining in the Pacific Ocean. Paired with testimonies from Pacific Island communities, this film addresses the impacts on their economies and ways of life. Afterward, Tara Maria Davenport (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore and Deputy Director, Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law) and Jonathan Galka(PhD Candidate, History of Science Department, Harvard University) will discuss the historic mining code and its future impact on resource extraction, drawing from legal, historical, and community perspectives.

Tuesday Lecture
10 December 2024, 6:30pm – 8:00pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore
Blk 6 Lock Road, #01-09
Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108934

Lecture & Screening of Kimi Takesue’s film That Which Once Was (2011)

Low-lying islands, including Singapore, are increasingly exposed to the risks of sea level rise caused by multiple factors, including the rapid melting of ice at the two poles. This event explores the diverse impacts of climate change, such as displacement. In Kimi Takesue’s fictional film, That Which Once Was, that takes place in 2032, an eight-year old boy from the Caribbean, is coming to terms with a new life in a harsh northern climate. Haunted by memories of the flooding that left him homeless and orphaned, he forms a bond with an Inuk ice carver, likewise displaced, who helps him confront his past. Kim Hie Lim (Associate Professor, Asian School of Environment, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering) will introduce the history of forced migration, already caused by rising sea levels, overlaying data on physical landscapes with genomic data in order to trace gene flow from Southeast Asia to South Asia. Followed by a conversation between film director Kimi Takesue, Assistant Professor Kim Hie Lim and Professor Ute Meta Bauer (Professor, School of Art, Design, and Media, Nanyang Technological University and Senior Principal Research Fellow, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore).

Tuesday, 18 March 2025
6:30pm – 8:30pm
The Hall, NTU CCA Singapore

Free admission. Register here.

This event is part of The Cross-Cultural Gaze: A Retrospective of Kimi Takesue’s Films curated by Dr Ella Raidel (Assistant Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU) with the support of NTU CCA Singapore and Women@NTU.

Kimi Takesue’s retrospective is a special segment of the programme Look / See: The Female Gaze in Cinema (7 – 30 March 2025) organised by Asia Film Archive to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Find out about Kimi Takesue’s other talks and screenings through the link below.

MORE INFO

Angela Ricasio Hoten is a research assistant at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University supporting the research projects Climate Transformation Programme (2024–2030), Developing and Evaluating Digital Tools for Participatory Climate Change Mitigation (2025–2026) and previously the Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (2023–2024). Angela holds a BA (Hons) in Environmental Studies and minor in Anthropology from Yale-NUS College, Singapore. She was also the undergraduate research assistant for ‘Lala Land: Singapore’s Seafood Heritage’ edited by Anthony Medrano, published by Epigram Books.

Ng Mei Jia is currently Research Associate at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, managing the research projects Climate Transformation Programme (2024–2030), Developing and Evaluating Digital Tools for Participatory Climate Change Mitigation (2025–2026) and a research assistant on Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss (2021–2024), Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (2021–2023), and Understanding Southeast Asia as a ‘Geocultural’ Formation (2021–2023). She was previously a Project Officer (Intangible Cultural Heritage) at the National Heritage Board, Singapore. Mei Jia holds an MA in Southeast Asian Studies from the National University of Singapore.

After a very successful first iteration of Climate Futures #1: Cultures, Climate Crisis and Disappearing Ecologies its second convening wants to build on its discussions and expand its understanding of the decline in cultural and ecological diversity in the region. It became very clear that such conversations require space and time to process complex issues, if we do not want to simplify and allow more than one way to process how people feel about their situations and want to be heard. Our futures require us to go beyond the status quo of current modes of operating. To not lose cultural knowledge and biodiversity Climate Futures #2: Belonging & Shared Responsibilities will share various narratives and practices that are already in place. It wants to further provide access to communities outside state and institutional structures to further nurture understanding of change in responsibilities and accountability.

The summit intents to further map how the climate crisis informs our contemporary world, and how diverse cultures can adjust or adapt without losing a sense of purpose. It comprises of discussions into alternative approaches to regional studies focusing on urgencies such as rising sea-levels and temperatures and the impact on natural resources of the region. A particular focus will be on areas such as the Mekong River and Delta (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam) and its water street to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines including the Straits that plays an essential role in the regions shared history.

The holistic approach of Climate Futures #1: Cultures, Climate Crisis and Disappearing Ecologies showed already how it can successfully stimulate a debate between artists, designers, and architects, scientists, environmentalists, as well as local voices and policy makers. We seek to reach out to an even wider public including younger scholars and practitioners, as well as community leaders and policy makers from the ASEAN region.

The future of our shared prosperity relies on our collective ability to create an inclusive and sustainable foundation for growth.

Read the programme brochure here.

Thursday, 26 October – Saturday 28 October 2023

Sokhalay Angkor Villa Resort, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Thursday, 26 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 668981.

9:30am Registration & Coffee

10:00am Opening Addresses

Dr Piti Srisangnam, Executive Director, ASEAN Foundation

H.E. Min Chandynavuth, Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, Cambodia

Prof. Tim White, Vice President (International Engagement); President’s Chair in Materials Science and Engineering; Professor, School of Materials Science & Engineering.

Welcome and Introduction by co-curators Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore), Founding Director NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and Professor School of Art, Design, and Media, NTU Singapore and Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore), Curator Residencies and Programms, NTU Centre of Contemporary Art, Singapore

10:30am The Art of Living Lightly, Keynote Lecture by Rachaporn Choochuey (Thailand), Architect, Co-founder, Design Director, all(zone) ltd

11:40am Between Bots and the Biosphere: Machine Philosophy, Media Ecologies, and Digital Hieroglyphs for Climate Adaptation, Case Study by Nashin Mahtani (Indonesia), Director, PetaBencana.id

12:00pm An Uncommon History of The Common Fence: A Prologue (To the Coast), Case Study by Jason Wee (Singapore), Artist, Writer, Curator

12:20pm Sharing Climate Futures: Developing tools for climate care and action, Case Study by Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore), Founding Director NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and Professor School of Art, Design, and Media, NTU Singapore

1:00pm Discussion with Rachaporn Choochuey (Thailand), Nashin Mahtani (Indonesia), and Jason Wee (Singapore). Moderated by Prof. Ute Meta Bauer (Germany/Singapore)

3:30pm Belonging & Sharing Responsibilities, Closed Workshop by Claudia Lasimbang a.k.a Yoggie, Technical Coordinator Watersheds and Communities, Forever Sabah, Philip Chin a.k.a. Linggit, Technical Coordinator Certified Sustainable Palm Oil, Forever Sabah, and Yee I-Lan (all Malaysia), artist

Friday, 27 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 400242.

8:45am Registration & Coffee

9:00am Welcome & Introduction

9:10am Creative Digital Lab: how artists, cultural and creative professionals and technologists work together to explore the potentials of XR technology in protecting heritage, safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and contributing to climate action. Lecture by Kamonrat Mali Chayamarit (Thailand), Culture Programme Officer, Lao PDR alternate Focal Point, UNESCO Culture related Conventions Advocate

9:40am Ecology for Non-Futures, Case Study by Binna Choi (South-Korea), Artists, part of Unmake Lab

10:20am Climate impact on social process and social structure, Case study by Daovone Phonemanichane (Laos), Strengthening Climate Resilience Project Manager, Oxfam Mekong Regional Water Governance Program

10:40am When Nature has Economic Value, Case Study by Som Supaprinya (Thailand), Artist

11:20am Discussion with Kamonrat Mali Chayamarit (Thailand), Binna Choi (South-Korea), Daovone Phonemanichane (Laos), and Som Supaprinya (Thailand). Moderated by Bejamin Hampe (Australia), Project Director, KONNECT ASEAN

1:00pm Glimpse of Life on the Water, Closed Workshop Sessions by Sovann Ke (Cambodia), Project Manager, OSMOSE

Saturday, 28 October
Join the livestream here with the passcode 353177.

8:45am Registration & Coffee

9:00am Introduction & Welcome

9:15am Every (de)Force Evolves into A (de)Form, Lecture by Gahee Park (South-Korea), Curator, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul

10:00am Pedagogy, Community, Art: Bottom-up Urbanism at Phnom Penh’s Wat Chen Dam Daek, Case Study by Lyno Vuth (Cambodia), Artist, and Eva Lloyd (Australia), Lecturer, University of New South Wales (UNSW)

10:20am Luang Prabang: From Cultural Landscape into Practice, Case Study by Phonepaseth Keosomsak (Laos), Architect, Artist

11:00am Snare for Birds: Rebelling Against an Order of Things, Case Study by Kiri Dalena (Philipines), Artist

11:20am Travelling through time, Case Study by Malin Yim (Cambodia), Artist

11:40am The New Word for World is Archipelago, Case Study by Nice Buenaventura (Philippines), Artist

12:00pm Discussion with Nice Buenaventura (Philippines), Kiri Dalena (Philipines), Phonepaseth Keosomsak (Laos), Gahee Park (South-Korea), Lyno Vuth (Cambodia), and Malin Yim (Cambodia). Moderated by Magdalena Magiera (Germany/Singapore)

2:30pm Visit of Blue Art Centre. Welcome by Sareth Svay (Cambodia), Artists, Director, Blue Art Centre

3:00pm Closing workshop by Cynthia Ong (Malaysia), Chief Executive Facilitator Forever Sabah Institute, LEAP

Curated by NTU CCA Singapore

Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director and Magdalena Magiera, Curator, Residencies and Programmes

Supported by

ASEAN Secretariat

ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund

Mission of the Republic of Korea to ASEAN

ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting for Culture and Arts

Programme support by Ministry of Culture and Fine Art, Cambodia

PROJECT PARTNERS

ASEAN FOUNDATION

Since the formation of ASEAN in 1967, ASEAN has embarked on a journey to accelerate economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the region. After three decades, ASEAN leaders recognised there remained inadequate shared prosperity, ASEAN awareness, and contact amongst the people of ASEAN. As a result, ASEAN leaders established the ASEAN Foundation during the ASEAN 30th Anniversary Commemorative Summit in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia on 15 December 1997.

KONNECT ASEAN

As the post-Cold War reality of a new world has taken shape and formed new directions and conversations, ASEAN has re-entered the contemporary art space via collaborative efforts between various ASEAN bodies. The Republic of Korea celebrated 30 years of diplomatic relations with ASEAN in 2019 and in the same year established KONNECT ASEAN, an ASEAN-Korea arts programme. Supported by the ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund and administered by the ASEAN Foundation, KONNECT ASEAN signals both an eagerness by ASEAN to revitalise its once integral role in contemporary visual arts and Korea’s sincerity in establishing closer ties with ASEAN.

The programme celebrates Southeast Asian and Korean arts using different platforms (exhibitions, education and conferences, public programmes, residencies, and publications and archives) to explore and discuss social, political, economic, and environmental issues in the region. The artists’ works and activities engages and strengthen the public’s understanding of ASEAN’s role in facilitating cultural diplomacy. Furthermore, the programme intends to connect with the three major stakeholder groups of government, business, and civil society to achieve the vision of an ASEAN Community. Outcomes provide permanent resources recording why ASEAN matters and its ongoing contribution to the region’s growth, prosperity, and stability.

NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Medicine, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and Graduate colleges. NTU is also home to world-renowned autonomous institutes—the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering—and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).

Under the NTU Smart Campus vision, the University harnesses the power of digital technology and tech-enabled solutions to support better learning and living experiences, the discovery of new knowledge, and the sustainability of resources. Ranked amongst the world’s top universities, the University’s main campus is also frequently listed among the world’s most beautiful. Known for its sustainability, over 95% of its building projects are certified Green Mark Platinum. Apart from its main campus, NTU also has a medical campus in Novena, Singapore’s healthcare district. For more information, visit ntu.edu.sg.

NTU CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART SINGAPORE

Situated within Singapore’s premier art precinct Gillman Barracks, NTU CCA Singapore is a pioneering institution that has been instrumental in shaping the contemporary art landscape in Singapore and beyond. With a focus on fostering creativity, innovation, and critical thinking, the Centre’s programmes have consistently challenged the status quo, encouraging artists to explore new realms of artistic expression. For more information, visit ntu.ccasingapore.org.

Image: Climate Futures #1, Jakarta (Indonesia), 2022. Courtesy NTU CCA Singapore, Konnect ASEAN & ASEAN Foundation.

Environmental knowledge and the ways it is communicated through visual arts have been at the core of Wang Ruobing’s practice for the past twenty years. With rising water temperatures and the expansion of the Tropical Warm Pool—a large mass of ocean water that features water temperature above 28 degree within which maritime Southeast Asia is situated—the coastal ecosystems in the region have become a crucial field for environmental research and climate change studies. Drawing equal inspiration from scientific knowledge and from Donna J. Haraway’s theories of ‘sympoiesis’ (making-with), the artist hopes to develop new artworks that reconfigure more sustainable relations to the Earth and all its inhabitants.

In this episode, we hand over the microphone to curator Tamares Goh to interview our Artist-in-Residence Wang Ruobing. Ruobing and Tamares share a long history of working together throughout their careers, one that goes back to 2004 and will continue on in the years to come. This conversation between peers shines a spotlight on Ruobing’s practice rooted in materiality, the importance of found objects in her art-making process, as well as her ongoing research into the symbiotic relationship between environmental sciences and visual arts. They also touch upon the collaborations Ruobing has activated with deep-sea divers and marine scientists, and how these collaborations continue to shape the trajectory of her artistic practice.

Committed to exploring new ways of seeing and methods of knowledge production, the artistic practice of Dr Wang Ruobing stretches from drawing to photography, sculpture, kinetic art, and installation. With a diverse range of methodological approaches to present her ideas, her body of work addresses environmental issues and transcultural discourses on identity and hybridity.

Tamares Goh is the deputy director of Audience Engagement at National Gallery Singapore, overseeing festivals like Light To Night, Painting With Light and the Gallery’s Childrens Biennale. She was the former head of Visual Arts at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, and co-headed the Programming department overseeing festivals and programmes. In 2017, she was the Producer for the Singapore Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.

Contributors: Wang Ruobing, Tamares Goh
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

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From its first iteration in 2013, Free Jazz has pushed boundaries and expanded upon pressing concerns of our times. Free Jazz IV. Geomancers continues this approach, featuring artworks ranging from virtual reality to video, performance, and sound as an exercise in planetary awareness. The exhibition presents significant artistic practices from across the globe that are deeply invested in creating an environmental consciousness and that share an understanding of the world as a vulnerable, yet resilient, mesh of coexistences, correlations, and co-creations. As with geomancy, these artworks can help us to read the signs that our planet is trying to send us and that they can inspire a stronger commitment to create a sustainable future for life on Earth.

Alongside scientists, environmental activists, enlightened policy makers and civil society members, contemporary artists are increasingly concerned with future prospects of ecological collapse and planetary survival. They address these issues through the language of art, creating images, sounds, narratives, and experiences that allow us to establish affective and cognitive connections with the environment and partake in the planetary intelligence of the Earth. Stemming from NTU CCA Singapore’s ongoing engagement with the overarching subject of Climates.Habitats. Environments., Free Jazz IV. Geomancers brings together a selection of creative practitioners who are distinctly alert to these urgencies.

Conceived for Singapore Art Week 2022, this programme consists of a film screening series, a virtual reality installation, a performance and a sound installation. Some of the featured artworks zero in on signs of earthly demise, others indicate pathways of resilience and strategies for regeneration. All the works result from long-term research and extensive fieldwork and, when presented together, they engender a kaleidoscopic overview of the multitudinous forms of ecological entanglements.

Free Jazz IV. Geomancers is supported by National Arts Council Singapore and Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo De Li Galli. NTU CCA Singapore also wishes to thank our collaborators IHME Helsinki, and PUB Singapore’s National Water Agency at Marina Barrage.

Artists: Martha Atienza (Philippines), Ursula Biemann (Switzerland), Carolina Caycedo & David de Rozas (United Kingdom; Spain/United States), Chu Hao Pei (Singapore), Liu Chuang (China), Pedro Neves Marques (Portugal), Katie Paterson (Scotland), Rice Brewing Sisters Club (South Korea), Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (Spain/Brazil), Jana Winderen (Norway), Zarina Muhammad & Zachary Chan (Singapore), and Robert Zhao Renhui (Singapore).

Free Jazz IV. Geomancers is supported by National Arts Council Singapore and Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo De Li Galli. NTU CCA Singapore also wishes to thank our collaborators Appetite, IHME Helsinki, and PUB Singapore’s National Water Agency at Marina Barrage.

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The Straits of Singapore have long been a hotspot for seafaring banditry. Throughout its cultural history, the notion of “pirate” has remained negatively connoted by its ancient definition as “common enemy of mankind”. Kin Chui plans to expand his ongoing research on concepts and practices of piracy in the Southeast Asian archipelago in order to articulate a speculative framework for a decolonised artistic praxis. By unravelling its multiplicity of meanings and manifestations—ranging from sea banditry to unauthorized reproductions, from illegal taxi services to unlicensed broadcasts—and the semantic shift from unlawful practice to mode of resistance, the artist will delve into the intersections between art and activism, subversive disruptions of colonial regimes and global capitalism, and issues of privatisation of the commons. Specifically, he plans to articulate a lexicon of resistance based on the glossary of piracy and conduct anthropological research into both digital pirate initiatives and counter-piracy measures implemented in the region.

In the context of her research project related to TBA21–Academy, during the residency Hessler aims to develop new collaborations in preparation for the next edition of The Current Convening to be held at NTU CCA Singapore in January 2018.

As part of her time in Singapore Joselina Cruz will connect with the current NTU CCA Singapore exhibition, Charles Lim Yi Yong: SEA STATE and with the artist, understanding his practice and process. Cruz will also connect with local artists and institutions and explore the Singapore art scene in connection to the larger region of Southeast Asia and The Philippines.

Born into a family of seafarers, Martha Atienza’s fascination with the maritime is nurtured by her deep-seated connection with the water and modes of living that unfold at sea. During the residency, Atienza aims to explore Singapore’s relationship with water and its geopolitical role in shaping connections and contrasts with neighboring countries. Using the studio as a space for experimentation, she will also further develop her methods of working with water.

Margarida Mendes is a writer, curator, and educator. In 2009 she founded the project space The Barber Shop in Lisbon, where she hosts a programme of seminars and residencies dedicated to artistic and philosophical research. Exploring the overlap between cybernetics, philosophy, sciences, and experimental film, her personal research investigates the dynamic transformations of materialism and their impact on societal structures and cultural production. She is interested in exploring alternative modes of education and political resilience through her collaborative practice, programming and activism. Margarida Mendes has curated projects in various institutions, among them Flat Time House, London; KIM? Contemporary Art Centre, Liga; Berardo Museum, Lisbon; Spike Island Centre of Contemporary Art & Design, Bristol; 98 Weeks, Beirut; and Serralves Museum, Porto.

Margarida holds an MA in Aural and Visual Culture from Goldsmiths College of London, and in 2013 she was part of the Synapse Curatorial Research Group included in the Anthropocene Project at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, with writing in the volume Textures of the Anthropocene: Grain Vapor Ray, published by MIT Press (2004). From 2017 on she will be based in Madrid where she will co-run Escuelita, an informal school at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo.

Charles Lim explores issues such as the environment, territorial borders and de-territorialisation. Lim researches the notions of borders, histories and everyday life and how these may be generated through our perceptions of the sea to create SEA STATE, recalling the excursions of the Land Art movement of the 1970s. His project scrutinises both natural and man-made systems, opening extraordinary new perspectives on our everyday surroundings, from unseen and alien landscapes, arbitrary borders and disappearing islands, to the imaginary boundaries of a future landmass.

Dennis Tan went to an arts college in Singapore and graduated with a diploma in Painting. Tan subsequently took on an MA in Architecture, however this course of study was peppered with interruptions and took over a decade to obtain his degree. During his studies, he took on the role of a nomad and a bricoleur, of thinking while making. Tan cites the turning point of his practice when he first encountered Alan Kaprow’s, The blurring of Art and Life and sees this and Tom Marioni’s, The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends Is the Highest Form of Art as a pivotal influence on his practice. Tan’s practice suspends conceptualism, tinkers with found objects and the environment as a gestural structure upon which the loop closes with the behaviour of its recipients. To date, this inclination sets the tone of his evolving practice.

Between February to June 2016, Tan was Artist-in-Residence at NTU CCA Singapore. During his residency, he continued his research on the fast-disappearing knowledge of marine craft in the region, working with oral histories in the Riau Archipelago to reconstruct a traditional Kolek sailboat.

By inhabitants in collaboration with Margarida Mendes

Deep sea mining is a new frontier of resource extraction located on the ocean seabed. It is set to begin in the next few years, as the technology is currently under development. Mining companies are, at present, leasing areas for exploitation in national and international waters in order to assess the potential to extract minerals and metals such as manganese, cobalt, gold, copper, iron, and other rare earth elements. The main geological sites targeted are areas rich in polymetallic nodules, seamounts, and hydrothermal vents; areas typically found where tectonic plates meet. The areas to be mined could cover parts of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean in international waters, and national waters off the islands of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, Japan, and the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. Assessment of the impact on deep sea ecosystems is underway, though their cumulative effects remain difficult to comprehend given the unprecedented variety and expanse of the mining sites targeted. At the same time, local and indigenous communities living in these regions are not being adequately consulted.

The prospects of this form of mining re-actualise a colonial, frontier mentality and are redefining extractivist economies for the twenty-first century. What is Deep Sea Mining? addresses both knowledge of the deep sea and ocean governance, but also efforts to defend a sustained ocean literacy beyond the United Nations’ “blue economy” at a time when the deep ocean, its species, and its resources remain largely unmapped and understudied.

Episode 1, Tools for Ocean Literacy, is historical and geographical introduction to deep sea mining, playing with Charles and Ray Eames’ 1977 film Powers of Ten.

Episode 2, Deep Frontiers, tells a story about knowledge of the seabed and its alien life, written by anthropologist Stefan Helmreich.

Episode 3, The Azore Case, focuses on the Portuguese Azores nine island archipelago, following European Union plans to mine in the region, based on a series of interviews with marine biologists and politicians conducted in the islands.

Episode 4, A Glossary on Mining, offers a brief glossary of terms that can be used to better tackle the issue of mining reserves and monopolies on land, which in turn may lead to the potential threat of deep sea mining.

Episode 5, The Papua New Guinea Case, addresses the plans to mine off the coast of Papua New Guinea as well as the long activist struggle by local communities across the Pacific against deep sea mining. Episode 5 will be premiered at NTU CCA Singapore, simultaneously in the Lab space and online on social media and the websites of NTU CCA Singapore’s website, the funding and partner institution TBA21 – Academy’s website, and inhabitants-tv.

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is pleased to present 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.

The Oceanic public programmes

The Current Convening #3 conference

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is pleased to present Arus Balik – From below the wind to above the wind and back again, an exhibition project that initiated from a conversation between Belgian curator Philippe Pirotte and Jakarta-based artist Ade Darmawan. Reconsidering Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s epic book Arus Balik (1995), which could be translated into English as a “turning of the tide,” the eponymous exhibition takes the novel as a starting point to reflect on perspectival shifts in geopolitical, cultural, social, religious, and natural spheres.

In his fictional account, Pramoedya elaborates on the weakening of the maritime culture of Javanese kingdoms in the early 16th century, the progressive Islamisation, and the beginning of Portuguese occupation on parts of the now Malay and Indonesian peninsula and archipelago. Important is that Pramoeda’s reversal of perspective as a meta-geographical impulse is comparable to the notion of the “inverted telescope” Benedict Anderson advances in his seminal book Spectre of Comparisons (1998): as a non-Eurocentric method of comparison in which for example Portugal is viewed from the standpoint of Southeast Asia, as through an inverted telescope, which causes a kind of vertigo. Pramoedya suggests that the final decline of the Majapahit empire, and the “change from traditional independence to colonial possession,” was largely caused by the different Javanese kingdoms having gradually turned their backs to the sea.

The participating artists expand on this prompt through installations, sculptures, films, performances, and texts, both existing works as well as new commissions. Ade Darmawan re-read Arus Balik with a special focus on how protagonists use natural resources, and will create a distilling dispositive with alkaline water from the straits, recalling that all the scrambling for the control of the archipelago was about the extraction of ore and goods. ila questions what it means to be Boyanese, Buginese, Minangkabau, or Javanese through encounters with Singapore residents now conflated as Malay. Their testimonies will be written on her body and wither, while exposed to salty water and weather on reclaimed areas of Singapore island. Paradise Blueprint (2017), a wallpaper designed by Zac Langdon-Pole, based on a cyanotype photogram of the removed legs of a so-called “Bird of Paradise,” addresses the history of cultural exchange and mythology surrounding the birds native to Papua New Guinea. Lucy Raven creates silk paintings or monoprints, made by imprint of sedimentation in erosion tables, as scrim backdrops she uses for a forthcoming film-production, called Kongkreto, inspired by the 1991 eruption of Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines that finally chased off the Americans from Clark Airbase. Book-aficionado, artist, and writer Shubigi Rao delves into the stories related to the difficult conditions, but also extraordinary examples of solidarity Pramoedya faced on prison island Buru while writing Arus Balik. A new video-installation by Melati Suryodarmo, Dancing under the Black Sky (2019), traces the history behind Reog performances, an art form of resistance and criticism of Ponorogo people of East Java towards Bhre Kertabhumi, a Majapahit king who slowly lost his authority in the 15th century, before Islam became a major force in Demak and controlled the coastal region of Java.

The exhibition Arus Balik aims to imagine the implication of histories and politics in processes of transition, such as colonisation and decolonisation, or shifts in maritime power for people and ports below (the straits of Malacca, South China Sea, Java Sea, and further east) and above (the Indian Ocean and further West) the wind. Have the multiple colonisations in Southeast Asia alienated the people from the sea coast? Is it possible to attempt a return? The reversal of the colonial fact, the promise of reversal of a geo-political, -cultural, and social systems, initially embodied by the Bandung conference in 1955, caused Afro-American author Richard Wright to write that “it smacked of tidal waves, of natural forces.”

The accompanying public programmes further investigate the topics raised, including a conversation on Saturday, March 23, around the book Arus Balik and the reception of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s oeuvre. On Saturday, May 25, another conversation will focus on living with the sea and the history of the straits.

Arus Balik – From below the wind to above the wind and back again is NTU CCA Singapore’s response and contribution to this year’s nation-wide bicentennial commemorations that reflect on Singapore’s history since the arrival of the British statesman Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819, considered the founder of modern Singapore.

Guest curated by Philippe Pirotte, Rector, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule, and Director, Portikus, Frankfurt, and Visiting Professor (2018/19), MA Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU.

Arus Balik – From below the wind to above the wind and back again public programmes

Charles Lim (b. 1973, Singapore) sees Singapore like no other artist. As a former professional sailor, his senses are keenly attuned to environments we rarely see and to forces most of us do not even notice. His early collaborative project, tsunamii.net, which participated in dOCUMENTA 11 (2002) traced the hidden submarine infrastructure that underpins our global computer networks. After sailing for Singapore in the 1996 Olympics, Lim studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, London, graduating in 2001. His SEA STATE series is an ongoing body of work that has been exhibited at the Dojima River Biennale, Osaka, Japan (2013); Lyon Biennial Rendez-Vous 13 at the Institut d’art contemporain Villeurbanne, France (2013); the Singapore Biennale (2011); Manifesta 7, Trentino-South Tyrol, Italy (2008); Shanghai Biennale (2008). Lim’s moving image works have been screened in international film festivals at Rotterdam, Tribeca and Edinburgh. His multi-award-winning short film, All The Lines Flow Out, premiered at the 68th Venice Film Festival, winning a Special Mention, the first award ever won there by a Singaporean production.

SEA STATE by artist Charles Lim Yi Yong, commissioned for the Singapore Pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale and curated by Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, will be presented at the NTU CCA Singapore from 30 April to 10 July 2016. For over a decade, Lim’s ongoing project SEA STATE examines the biophysical, political and psychic contours of Singapore through the visible and invisible lenses of the sea. SEA STATE is an in-depth inquiry by an artist that scrutinises both man-made systems, opening new perspectives on our everyday surroundings, from unseen landscapes and disappearing islands to the imaginary boundaries of a future landmass.

SEA STATE pubic programmes

First held at the Palazzo Franchetti on the occasion of the Singapore Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, the symposium The Geopolitical and the Biophysical: a structured conversation on Art and Southeast Asia in context will continue and expand upon the debate with a second iteration at NTU CCA Singapore during Lim’s exhibition on 17 and 18 June 2016.

The Geopolitical and the Biophysical: a structured conversation on Art and Southeast Asia in context, Part II symposium

The presentation of SEA STATE and the symposium The Geopolitical and the Biophysical: a structured conversation on Art and Southeast Asia in context, Part II held at NTU CCA Singapore are generously supported by the Ministry of Culture, Community & Youth, National Arts Council Singapore and the Singapore Tourism Board.

Fish Story, to be continued presents an investigation of the global maritime industry, an extensive research of the late artist, theorist, photography historian and critic, Allan Sekula. Showing for the first time in Southeast Asia, NTU CCA Singapore will juxtapose chapters from Fish Story (1988 – 1993) alongside two film works, Lottery of the Sea (2006) and The Forgotten Space (2010) co-directed with Nöel Burch. With a focus on the core works of his explorations of the maritime world, this exhibition aims to emphasise Allan Sekula’s sustained argument that the sea is the “forgotten space” of the contemporary global economy. Fish Story, to be continued will include works from the collections of Fond Regional d’art contemporain Bretagne, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York and Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA 21), Vienna.

An International Symposium is organised on the occasion of Fish Story, to be continued on Saturday 26 September 2015. Bringing together different researchers and artists who have collaborated or share common interests with Allan Sekula’s work, the symposium will focus on key themes of his practice including questions of critical realism in contemporary art and representation of labour.

This exhibition is part of NTU CCA Singapore’s curatorial programme PLACE.LABOUR.CAPITAL., a trandisciplinary research addressing the complexities of a world in flux and the network of connections that such underlying elements define at both local and global scale.

Allan Sekula: Fish Story, to be continued public programmes

International Symposium – Allan Sekula: Fish Story, to be continued