The Drowned World (original) (raw)
Related papers
Goodbye on the Seas: Rising Waters, Submerging Lives
eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the Tropics, 2021
This hybrid memoir begins and ends with a sea journey. Combining real-life story and dystopian tropical imaginary, the author takes us to the Straits of Malacca off the coast of Peninsular Malaysia, to futures of submerged cities in 2050, and on a final journey into the South China Sea off the coast of Sarawak on the island of Borneo. This is a story of climate change and rising seas entwining vignettes of pandemic lockdown, of a father’s dying, and the author’s future life submerged. It questions human survival in a world of demise, shaped by pandemic and surrounded by waters slowly but inexorably rising.
Journal of Curatorial Studies, 2020
Over the last decade, a wave of ocean-themed exhibitions has swelled in international and interdisciplinary contexts. Ranging from large-scale permanent displays in national museums of maritime and natural history to transient exhibitions of contemporary art and international biennials, this surge of curatorial activity corresponds to increasing public and scientific awareness about the ecological devastation of the Earth's oceans. Indeed, the 'oceanic turn' in exhibitions parallels the emergent scholarly field of the Blue Humanities (Winkiel 2019: 1). 1 This special issue investigates how curatorial practice can uniquely contribute to understanding the complex relationships between ocean ecosystems, marine wildlife and human activity at this time of environmental crisis. Together, the contributors critically reflect on this exhibitionary turn to the sea in its multivalent forms and begin to chart the heritage of this practice. As such, these texts make a marine-focused contribution to the nascent field of curatorial and museum studies concerned with ecology and sustainability, examining the oceanic Anthropocene through the lens of exhibitions. 2 The most recent iteration of the Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times (2019), curated by Ralph Rugoff, was marked by an overall disastrous tone that responded to surrounding international circumstances in which climate change played a major role. Notably, a strong oceanic thread ran
Our spirits lie in the water is the latest exhibition of the Yiribana Gallery in the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW). Yiribana means “this way” in the language of the Eora People, acknowledging the location of the gallery on traditional Gadigal land. Its purpose is to showcase works from AGNSW’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collection. This particular exhibition will be held from 15 November 2014–1 November 2015. I have chosen to focus on Eel Trap by Ngarrindjeri artist Yvonne Koolmatrie, her 1997 traditionally-woven sculpture that uses endangered sedge rushes and measures 168 x 59 x 59cm. This piece, her later 2013 companion piece and the artist herself are outstanding representations of how a so-called ancient civilization thrives and has relevance in modern Australia.
Cartographic Perspectives, 2017
Mapping The Drowned World Climate-change is the new Cold War. Like the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation, climate-change looms in the background, a constant insidious threat: imminent and inexorable, yet ill defined. Written in 1962, during the perpetual slowburning crisis of the Cold War, J.G. Ballard's novel The Drowned World reads like an uncanny premonition of the key crisis of our current age: climate-change. As a bridge between the postwar apocalyptic fears of the recent past and current eschatological anxieties, this allegorical work of fiction is a rich source of information. Mapping The Drowned World is driven by the research question: what can we learn about our world by re-reading, rewriting and re-interpreting The Drowned World through the lens of art? This three-pronged methodology has generated three suites of artworks: a series of maps, and two major installations in the form of ruined scalemodel cities. In addition, a group exhibition which featured some of these works, alongside works made by five other Australian artists, was staged and documented in a catalogue, also titled Mapping The Drowned World. The written content of this research includes several new analyses of The Drowned World, critiques of the artworks made as part of this project and works made by other artists, and an original interstitial chapter for the novel which recuperates the only female character in The Drowned World. Together, both the creative and written components of this research contribute new knowledge to three fields: scholarship on J.G. Ballard, including contemporary artworks made in direct response to his stories; the field of critical cartography, both textual and visual; and works which respond to eschatological anxiety. 10 visions of the future; The Atrocity Exhibition, 1970, and other efforts in radical short fiction; Crash, 1973, an experiment in technophilic porn; his meditations on the dystopian present such as High Rise, 1975, and Kingdom Come, 2006; and his most conventional novel, Empire of the Sun, 1984, which even gained widespread mainstream readership and won major literary prizes. 12 Ballard has been described, among other things, as "the seer of Shepperton", 13 a "poet of death" 14 and "the most reluctant of messiahs". 15 Ballard's own obsessiveness 16 is echoed in the obsessive devotion of his wide range of fans, a diverse group which includes sci-fi geeks, self-styled Ballard experts and university sanctioned academic scholars. Which is not to say that Ballard doesn't have his detractors. Critics who admire Ballard spend a great deal of time defending him against those who don't. An example that gets quoted (and refuted) frequently is English critic Duncan Fallowell's particularly vitriolic 1977 review of Ballard's collection of short stories, Low-Flying Aircraft. Fallowell berated Ballard for being a "prophet of doom" who himself profits from his visions of catastrophe and encourages others to wallow in fantasies of disaster. 17 Fallowell also accused Ballard of creating poorly sketched, one-dimensional, sexist characters utilising prose that is conventional at best. American author H. Bruce
" Visualizing Lake Ontario through the installations of Bonnie Devine and Nicole
Intermedialité, 2020
The efficacy of Lake Ontario is explored in relation to the Canada/US border, which is not only a physical feature in much of the country, but contributes to the geographic imaginary of Canada. This offers a context to discuss two art installations by Bonnie Devine and Nicole Clouston who both engage with the integrated, material and lively watershed of Lake Ontario. Vital materiality literature and indigenous cosmologies will be engaged with to show how the installations reaffirm the efficacy and physicality of Lake Ontario as a resistant space and place in relation to the colonial nation state of Canada with its arbitrary borders.
The Sea is All Around Us - Exhibition catalogue and Essay
The Sea is All Around us is a multi-layered event which creates a memorable experience for those visiting the Dome Gallery and the Mission to Seafarers in Melbourne’s Docklands. The event acknowledges and raises awareness of the often difficult and dangerous working lives and journeys of seafarers by making visible their role in transporting commodities, materials and objects to and from Australia’s shores. This installation at the Dome Gallery in the Mission to Seafarers in Melbourne’s Docklands marks the third stage of an ongoing research project which seeks to reveal the ‘social life’ of souvenirs. Beyond their representational role souvenirs also trigger intangible, affective qualities – reminders of journeys and places, new associations with tastes, sounds and people, and thereby becoming objects which focus and hold memories. This installation invites seafarers and visitors to participate in a global project which aims to witness sea journeys and trace the mobile life of seafarers and souvenirs. For a fortnight in May 2015, the Dome Gallery became an architectural large scale compass, with the circular floor marking the intersection of its latitude and longitude (37 º 49'21" S 144º 57'03"E). Over these two weeks the Dome Gallery was inscribed with marks recording journeys made by seafarers, recording destination and departure ports, home lands and waterways, and in doing so making visible a small segment of the global patterns of seafaring. Custom-made souvenirs designed for the installation are given to seafarers as gestures of welcome and a memento of their visit. The souvenirs originating in Poland continue their journey by sea, to destinations beyond the Dome becoming part of the global network of seafaring, with an invitation for seafarers to record their future journeys using QR code scanning technologies. It is hoped that by releasing the 200 limited edition souvenirs accompanying the seafarers the mobile life of souvenirs and seafarers will also become visible. Like messages in bottles they leave our shores, becoming ambassadors, representing the Dome Gallery at the Mission to Seafarers, the waters of Port Phillip Bay, Australia’s red soil and vegetation, and carrying memories of visiting Melbourne.