Climates. Habitats. Environments.

Artists and writers go beyond disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to address the fight for environmental justice, uniting the Asia-Pacific vantage point with international discourse.

Modeling the curatorial as a method for uniting cultural production and science, Climates. Habitats. Environments. weaves together image and text to address the global climate crisis. Through exhibitions, artworks, and essays, artists and writers transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to bring their knowledge and experience to bear on the fight for environmental justice. In doing so, they draw on the rich cultural heritage of the Asia-Pacific, in conversation with international discourse, to demonstrate transdisciplinary solution-seeking.
 
Experimental in form as well as in method, Climates. Habitats. Environments. features an inventive book design by mono.studio that puts word and image on equal footing, offering a multiplicity of media, interpretations, and manifestations of interdisciplinary research. For example, botanist Matthew Hall draws on Ovid’s Metamorphoses to discuss human-plant interpenetration; curator and writer Venus Lau considers how spectrality consumes—and is consumed—in animation and film, literature, music, and cuisine; and critical theorist and filmmaker Elizabeth Povinelli proposes “Water Sense” as a geontological approach to “the question of our connected and differentiated existence,” informed by the “ancestral catastrophe of colonialism.” Artists excavate the natural and cultural DNA of indigo, lacquer, rattan, and mulberry; works at the intersection of art, design, and architecture explore “The Posthuman City”; an ongoing research project investigates the ecological urgencies of Pacific archipelagos. The works of art, the projects, and the majority of the texts featured in the book were commissioned by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore.
 
Copublished with NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

Ute Meta Bauer is Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Professor in the School of Art, Design, and Media at Nanyang Technological University Singapore. Previously, she was Associate Professor and Founding Director of the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P).
 

12 Foreword 
13 Preface
15 Introduction: Climates. Habitats. and Environments. The Natural, The Supranatural, The Oceanic
24 Introduction: The River
Chapter 1 - The Natural 
32 Exhibition: Trees of Life - Knowledge in Material
48 Plant Habitats
60 Fu Yabing, Masalon Dulo, Ikat Dyer, and the Theoretical Weight of Endurance
70 Exhibition: Jef Geys, Quadra Medicinale Singapore
84 Landfills--Non-places of Anthropocene
98 The Camille Stories: Children of Compost
106 Exhibition: The Posthuman City, Climates. Habitats. and Environments.
122 Human-Plant Metamorphosis
132 "Suddenly, as If for the First Time, Winter Came, Once Again"--Environments, Change, and Art
Chapter II-The Supranatural 
144 Screening: An Invocation to the Earth
150 In the Trail of Fragrance and Tigers: Sensing a Pre-Islamic Fugitive King in the Islamic Present
168 Art and Communication: A Regional Genealogy
182 Embers of an Exhibition: Hauntology, Habitability, Postmodern Futures
192 Exhibition: Ghosts and Spectres-Shadows of History
206 Hungry Ghosts
Chapter III-The Oceanic
220 Exhibition: Tarek Atoui. The Ground: From the Land to the Sea
234 Water Sense
254 An Oceanic Cosmology and Lifeworld
264 The Turn of the Tide: Maritime Vision and Kampung Mentality in Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Arus Baljk
270 Exhibition: Arus Balik-From Below the Wind to Above the Wind and Back Again
286 The Ocean in Us
298 Exhibition: The Oceanic 
316 The Ecological Imperative 
322 Research Presentation: What is Deep Sea Mining?
326 Conference: The Current Convening #3 Tabu / Tapu - Who Owns the Ocean?
340 The Open Boat
Chapter IV-The River
52 Annalies
56 Songmap for Lim Kim Seng and Lim Kim Chua Sunshadow Boxes
90 In Depth (landmines) / Cambodian Series In Depth (landmines) / Colombian Series 
94 Research Presentation: Final Report of the Christmas Island Expert Working Group
128 Art as Environment--A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek
160 Flowers from our Bloodlines 
164 No Gods, No Masters
174 Research Presentation: The Wind that Cuts the Body
178 Marshal Tie Jia - Turtle Island Marshal Tie Jia - Jingsi Village
212 Central Region
238 Research Presentation: The Ring of Fire (2014-Ongoing) 
242 Mngrv 
246 Panangatan
250 Gut Technics
260 Pulau Kutai
Appendix
344 Biographies
354 Credits
360 About NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
366 NTU CCA Singapore Timeline (2017-21)
398 Acknowledgments 
400 Colophon