Intertidal Polyphonies

Is it high tide now in Singapore? And is it low tide in Vancouver? How about in Hong Kong? Intertidal Polyphonies will change depending on when you access it during the tide tables for these three cities.

Are we looking for what debris the low tide might uncover when we venture towards the shoreline or are we borne on the high tide to think through the transnational connections to each coast? What polyphonies might we hear here?

This project works through the legacies of imperialism and colonialism in the urban intertidal zones of Singapore, Vancouver and Hong Kong. It considers the laws that govern them, our conceptions of nature, and what decolonial possibilities might lie in their futures. Works of fiction, poetry, theatre, installation art, photography, and other aesthetic modes of expression offer us, both in form and content, new ways of being together in these contested spaces even as we acknowledge their long and fraught histories. Writers and artists in thinking about these coastlines are also thinking through issues of land reclamation, the use of migrant labour, top-down urban planning, and reconceptualizations of “nature” and “ecology."

The project includes a wide range of site-specific texts including my own field recordings of ambient sound and visuals from the coastlines of the three cities. I have conducted 19 wide-ranging interviews with writers, artists, and thinkers from the three cities. There are also lists of critical readings, installation art pieces, collections of poetry, novels, short stories, and plays --- these are placed alongside the language of the planning document, the architectural brief, and the legal document.

Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada