OM DENNE EPISODE
This episode traces the swamp as a site where something can both belong and not belong, as a space of possibility and impossibility, where multiple ideas, forms, and ways of life can exist in harmony and disharmony all at once.
Participants in this episode include: Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl reading passages of their essay that will thread together the other segments throughout the episode. Environmental scientist Gonzalo Carrasco and architect Feifei Zhou discuss their project “Before There Was Land, There Were Mangroves”, commissioned for the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale. The project involves a series of mapping analyses examining Singapore’s history of land reclamation and the chemical impacts of recent industrial and urban transformations along the Southern coastline. Anthropologist Marcus Barber talks to Waka Mununggurr, the chairperson of the Djalkiripuyngu Aboriginal Corporation, about Indigenous relationships to land and sea. Tejah Shah reads five poems that were written by Minal Hajratwala, commissioned for Shah’s project Between the Waves. Chris Cyrille-Isaac tells a story he wrote called The Crab and the Aparahiwa in French for his exhibition “But the world is a mangrovity.” An English translation of The Crab and the Aparahiwa can be read here. Collaged in between are audio clips from soundscapes, interviews and films by Nicole L’Huillier, Thao Nguyen Phan and Barbara London, Sónia Vaz Borges and Filipa César, and Magnetic Ideals.
SOUND & VIDEO CREDITS
L’Huillier, Nicole (2018). Amphibian Songs [Audio Files]
Amphibian Songs was originally composed for Futurity Island, a project by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, designed in collaboration with Indrė Umbrasaitė, that is an infrastructure for interspecies communication and an open space for learning.
Borges, Sónia Vaz & César Filipa (Directors). (2022) Mangrove School [Film, excerpt]
LOOP Barcelona (2020) Becoming Alluvium Thao Nguyen Phan in conversation with Barbara London [Film, excerpt]
Shah, Tejal (2012) Between the Waves [Audio Files]
Lumm, Kirsty and McKnight, Heather (2023) The Swamp: Ritualising our Biodiversity as a Utopian Somatic Practice [Film]
