KENT CHAN: FUTURE TROPICS
25 MAY - 10 SEP 23
PREVIEW: WEDNESDAY 24 MAY, 6:30-8:30PM
Gasworks presents Future Tropics, the first UK solo exhibition by Amsterdam-based Singaporean artist Kent Chan.
Chan uses film, sound, and installation to consider the relationship between climate and culture, and its ramifications on society. In Future Tropics, he inserts a microclimate into the gallery space alongside new and existing moving-image works that speculate on the tropical imaginary and the context, politics, and aesthetics of heat.
In his new spatial installation, ‘Monsoons’, a series of humidifiers and heat lamps are dispersed around the gallery space. Mimicking the hot and humid climatic conditions of the tropics, they turn on and off, recreating seasonal shifts of weather. These climactic devices upend the traditional climate-control systems of Western museums, where cool and dry conditions are imperative, and where order and systems reign. Under a warm hue of yellow light an endless summer lingers. Days and nights, geographies, histories, and cultures all blur into one.
These conditions are narrated in ‘Future Tropics’ (2023), a new film by Chan that speculates upon the ramifications of earth’s warming and consequent loss of climate variation. The film pushes observations of tropical expansion to their extreme ends. It follows fictional characters as they explore future societies and environs, ultimately asking the questions “if the entire world turned tropical, what would it mean to have an Old and New Tropics? How would our global culture and geopolitical relations be reshaped in a mono-climatic world?”
Alongside the film, is a presentation of ‘Warm Fronts’ (2021-ongoing), a series of transmissions from across the tropics that tap into electronic music’s long-held associations as forms of futurist statement. Displayed over four screens are sets by musicians from different regions of the tropics (Guillerrrrmo [Brazil], Makossiri [Kenya], Kaleekarma [India], Gabber Modus Operandi [Indonesia]). Together they create a sonic and solar alliance built upon their shared histories and the connectivity of heat. Nearby, four posters introduce a micro-fiction inspired by each performer that foretell a radical tropical future.
The tropics are expanding, they cover almost 40% of the Earth’s surface area, and by 2050 more than half of the world’s population will live there. Future Tropics situates this zone within a future tense, a place of possibility and imagination, at-odds with the global narrative of the region being behind and out-of-time. Chan’s prescient work expands our geoclimatic imagination as we move towards a post-climatic world.
--
Future Tropics rescored by Zai Tang
May 27
7 – 8:30pm
A live re-scoring of Kent Chan’s, Future Tropics by Zai Tang, sound designer of the film. Drawing from the themes of mono-climates and ecosystem collapse, as well as the film’s atmospherics, Tang will expand the existing soundtrack with layers of augmented wildlife recordings from Singapore, along with synthesized sounds inspired by these habitats.
The emergent soundscape will bring audience, environment and atmosphere together, allowing us to find alternative readings towards the ecological horizon of Future Tropics, and beyond.
The gallery will remain open after the event until 8.30pm for informal conversation and an opportunity to visit the rest of the exhibition.
--
Exhibition Credits
Kent Chan's exhibition is commissioned and produced by Gasworks with the generous support of Mondriaan Fonds and National Arts Council Singapore, with special thanks to The Institutum. With in-kind support from Spike Island Exhibition Services.
Gasworks commissions are supported by Catherine Petitgas and Gasworks Exhibition Supporters.
--
Biography
Kent Chan is an artist, curator and filmmaker based in the Netherlands and Singapore. He was artist-in-residence at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht in 2019/20. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam; de Appel, Amsterdam (both 2021); Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht (2020); and the National University Singapore Museum (2019). Selected group exhibitions and screenings include Tate Modern, London; IFFR Rotterdam International Film Festival (both 2022); Times Museum, Guangdong; Onassis Stegi, Athens; Bienalsur, Argentina (all 2021); and Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht (2020).
