Presentation Archives · CLIMATES. HABITATS. ENVIRONMENTS.

The Current Convening #3 Tabu / Tapu – Who Owns the Ocean? marks the culmination of TBA21–Academy The Current’s first cycle of expeditions, bringing together The Current Fellows; thought leaders from diverse disciplines; local agencies and activist NGOs. Through discursive events including talanoa discussions, case studies, workshops, provocations, as well as performative events, Convening #3 shares with a wider public the research and challenges generated through the format of such expeditions. It focuses on the modalities of exchange, addresses environmental urgencies, raises questions regarding responsibilities and ownership, and discusses whether rights of nature can be equal to human rights. Environmental researchers, conservationists, anthropologists, and policymakers will share a platform that invites active and creative participation on how we can understand and effect the development to international law, policies, culture, and environmental education.

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

The Current Convening #3 Tabu / Tapu – Who Owns the Ocean? has been conceived by Markus Reymann, Director of TBA21–Academy; Stefanie Hessler,Curator of TBA21–Academy; and Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director of NTU CCA Singapore, and expedition leader of The Current’s first cycle.

Residencies Rewired Session #1, 2021, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

Presentation: Lêna Bùi (Vietnam) & Elizabeth Ang (Singapore) – “Kindred”
Coalescing research and materials gathered over the past months on botanical histories, flora, and fauna, as well as historical characteristics relating to their respective cities—Saigon and Singapore—Lêna and Elizabeth compose a short text collaboratively which unfolds narratives of growth and decay, cycles of development and reincarnation, and also evokes the diversity of the region.

Since 2018, Irwan Ahmett and his partner, Tita Salina, carried out expeditions along the northern coast of Jakarta on foot. Through their journey, they found many illusions that is being faced by Jakarta's coastal citizens. They realized that these illusions emerged as a result of the climate crisis that occurred and its impact was felt most by the people living within Jarta's coastlines. They expressed their concern regarding the situations through art performances in the hope that more people would become aware of this situation.

One of the experiences brought about by COVID-19 restrictions Bandasak has contended with was staying in the same place for a prolonged time, long enough to look carefully at what is behind his house. This short video was shot in a mangrove area with abandoned shipwrecks that the artist has newly discovered.

Commissioned by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore.

Yeo Siew Hua (Filmmaker, Director) and Dr Marc Glöde (Assistant Professor, NTU School of Art, Design and Media)

Conceived during the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival in 2019, while large scale fires were consuming the forests of Indonesia, Yeo Siew Hua's 'An Invocation to the Earth' confronts climate collapse through the lense of pre-colonial folktales and animistic rituals. Through spoken spells and bodily entanglements, the video conjures up the fallen environmental defenders of a region ridden with ecological threats in the hope that their spirits will be reborn once again.

This recording is part of the two-day symposium, "Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific" held at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, supported by the Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Project (RG39/21) and led by Principal Investigator, Professor Ute Meta Bauer. This symposium was organised by Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Research Assistant Angela Ricasio Hoten, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore with additional support from Eunice Lacaste, PhD Candidate at NTU ADM.

Som Supaparinya (Artist, Thailand), Dr Erich Wolff (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Asian School of Environment and Earth Observatory of Singapore, NTU), Dr Stefan Huebner (Senior Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute, NUS), moderated by Laura Miotto (Associate Professor, NTU School of Art, Design and Media).

In this discussion, our panellists bring together insights from the disciplines of art, architecture, history and engineering towards the generative potentialities of varying strategies for climate adaptation for water-based communities, drawing both from the past and thinking toward speculative futures.

Nashin Mahtani (Peta Bencana and Climate Emergency Software Alliance, Indonesia), Dr Sang-Ho Yun (Director, Remote Sensing Lab, Earth Observatory of Singapore; Associate Professor, Asian School of the Environment and School of Electric and Electronic Engineering, NTU, Singapore), moderated by Eunice Lacaste (PhD Candidate, NTU ADM).

Previous collaborators Nashin Mahtani, and Dr Sang-Ho Yun, will discuss the applications of satellite technology for localised tracking of disasters through smartphones. Learn about their previous collaboration on disaster risk reduction in Indonesia and how they utilised technology to construct more equitable forms of climate risk response and adaptation to the region.

Nice Buenaventura (Artist, Philippines), Serina Abdul Rahman (Lecturer, Department of Southeast Asia Studies, NUS), moderated by Soh Kay Min (Research Associate, NTU ADM).

Filipina artist Nice Buenaventura and lecturer Serina Abdul Rahman discuss the value and importance of citizen-centered learning along the archipelago. Moderated by research associate, Soh Kay Min, the panel will discuss the ways that weather shapes community fishing practices and local knowledge and how these communities respond to changing weather through varied projects of counter-mapping.

Ang Song Nian (Artist, Lecturer at NTU ADM, Singapore), Zen Teh (Artist, Singapore), Dr Ching Jianhong (Assistant Professor, Duke-NUS), moderated by Angela Ricasio Hoten (Research Assistant, NTU ADM)

We bring together long-term collaborators, artist Zen Teh and scientist Dr Ching Jianhong alongside image-based artist and lecturer at the NTU School of Art, Design and Media, Ang Song Nian to discuss lens-based artistic practices and their application to data visualisation and scientific communication. Moderated by Angela Ricasio Hoten, research assistant on the Tier 1 grant, this panel will explore the ways that artistic practices enhance scientific enquiries, looking more precisely at how lens-based work can contribute to public discourse around topics such as haze. The panel will also discuss some of the challenges faced by artists and scientists to create distinctions between transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary vernacular.

Therianthropy, the mythological ability of humans to metamorphose into other animals through shapeshifting, has marked myth and folklore across cultures and times, remaining one of the most common tropes in magical and otherworldly narratives. Drawing from concepts of the demonised and desired body, gender-based archetypes, and mythmaking, this lecture performance invokes family histories and revokes the lineages of colonisation in Southeast Asia. The event unfolds through the layering of personal memory, collective history, and fragments of ancestral and indigenous knowledge on healing and killing. Remembering the rites of the Wolf Spider and the Harimau Jadian (Were-Tiger) and exploring their multiple translations and adaptations, the performance looks at intergenerational and cross-cultural exchange through storytelling, rituals, gestures, and embodied movement. This programme takes place on the occasion of Art After Dark x Gillman Barracks 5th Anniversary Celebrations.