Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Shekhar Krishnan, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

As the world faces the largest refugee crisis since the end of WWII, and as climate change is already disrupting human settlement and production patterns around the world, there has never been a greater need for advanced humanitarian design, research, and education that moves well beyond disciplinary boundaries to produce new forms of collaboration with frontline actors and agencies. Scientific research suggests that this need is especially acute in Southeast Asia, where the effects of climate change are arriving earliest and with an extreme intensity in comparison to temperate zones. Yet, the urgency of this historical moment has not yet been met with the bold innovation such a situation demands. How can new alliances among scholars, governments, and community-based organizations help to transform the trajectory of academic research and ensure the relevance of university research for the addressing the challenges of the Anthropocene?

In this research presentation, Dr Etienne Turpin will argue for an “anastrophic” approach to design and research in the Anthropocene. Whereas a catastrophe is the coming apart of the past, the anastrophe is the coming together of the future. How can researchers in Asia develop new forms of research and collaboration to shape this future? In an age marked by the increasingly volatile and unpredictable effects of climate change and attendant human conflict, it is now clear that civilization will be characterized by a nearly permanent state of humanitarian crisis. This ‘new normal’ of proliferating humanitarian crises requires a convergence of disciplinary fields and knowledge practices that can help students learn how to effectively work in complex, multi-centred and multi-stakeholder teams to respond adequately to these challenges. Therefore, the presentation will argue the that development of humanitarian infrastructure should not be understood as a design trend but, instead, as the emerging paradigm for intellectual and scholarly practice in the Anthropocene.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Etienne Turpin is a philosopher, research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and founding director of anexact office in Jakarta, Indonesia. With Anna-Sophie Springer, he is the principal co-investigator of the exhibition-led inquiry ReassemblingNature.org and co-editor of the Intercalations: Paginated Exhibition series, published by K. Verlag and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. He is also the co-editor of Fantasies of the Library (MIT Press, 2016), Art in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2015), Jakarta: Architecture + Adaptation (Universitas Indonesia Press, 2013), and editor of Architecture in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2013).

REGISTRATION

Admission is free, and light refreshments will be provided. We would greatly appreciate if you click on the “Register” button above to RSVP.