Strata of the Asia-Pacific: Mediating the Geologic and Aquatic Environment
The sedimented cultural and geopolitical histories of the Asia Pacific are hidden deep in the earth鈥檚 strata, submerged under the ocean waves, and preserved by forests, rivers, reefs, and islands. Such layered formations and transformations of the region have posed new challenges and opportunities for environmental humanities scholars and artists interested in exploring interconnected processes of mediation that move beyond national boundaries and technological milieus.
This virtual workshop brings together scholars whose research and artistic practices probe the entangled technical, institutional, colonial, embodied, and infrastructural mediations that inform the territorial politics, energy transition, militarization, conservation, cultural production, and documentation in the region. We forge conversations across the geologic and aquatic environments of various Asia-Pacific islands (Okinawa, Taiwan, the Marshall Islands), rivers, tropical forests, and straits across South Korea, China, Thailand, and Singapore. The workshop is resolutely interdisciplinary, merging methodologies and theories from film and media studies, art history, literary studies, eco-feminism, decolonial critiques and settler colonial studies of empire, infrastructure studies, and critical art practices.
