Territories of Territory Extraction, MAS Context Reading Room, Chicago, 2021. © Dan Kelleghan Photography. Courtesy of MAS Context.
The work in this exhibition is drawn from the ongoing research project “Territories of Territory Extraction,” which uses Singapore’s physical growth since 1989 as a register of the international sand supply chain in Southeast Asia. Across multiple interlinked publications and a field study in Singapore, Territories of Territory Extraction explores the multiple vectors of forensic architectural analysis used to expose Singapore’s relationship with its supply chains.
Drawing together work published in Faktur Journal, PLAT, Thresholds, and others, this Reading Room is an immersive environment for investigating the material and political ties that link architecture, construction, and geopolitical maneuvering in Singapore. Projects on display investigate the history and logics of Singapore’s sand stockpiles, locate the international fleet of vessels at work dredging and transporting sand, and construct a chronological index of the origins of Singapore’s coastline reclamation megaprojects.
RELATED EVENT
Thursday, October 14, 2021 at 6PM
Medium Matters: Architectural Representation After Construction
Lecture by designers Tami Banh and Galen Pardee, and architects Lydia Kallipoliti and Joshua G. Stein.
Exhibition credits
Exhibition organized by MAS Context.
Research for this project was supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and The Howard E. LeFevre ’29 Emerging Practitioner Fellowship at The Knowlton School, The Ohio State University.
Thanks to Faktur Journal (Pep Aviles + Matthew Kennedy), PLAT Journal (Sebastian Lopez Cardozo, editor), and Thresholds Journal (B. Jack Hanly + Nina Wexelblatt) for being part of the exhibition.
Territories of Territory Extraction was a partner program of the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial.
The exhibition later traveled to Wedge Gallery at Woodbury University in Los Angeles and the Graham Resource Center at IIT in Chicago.
Territories of Territory Extraction, MAS Context Reading Room, Chicago, 2021. © Dan Kelleghan Photography. Courtesy of MAS Context.
Territories of Territory Extraction, MAS Context Reading Room, Chicago, 2021. © Dan Kelleghan Photography. Courtesy of MAS Context.
Territories of Territory Extraction, MAS Context Reading Room, Chicago, 2021. © Dan Kelleghan Photography. Courtesy of MAS Context.
Territories of Territory Extraction, MAS Context Reading Room, Chicago, 2021. © Dan Kelleghan Photography. Courtesy of MAS Context.
Singapore key map, showing areas of coastal reclamation (TC), sand storage and stockpiling (SF) and active dredging and sand shipping sites (MS). © Galen Pardee.
These indexes are composited together into reconstructions of Singapore’s coastline, marking sand suppliers through time and space with patches of color. © Galen Pardee.
These topographies can be broken apart by year, and indexed against trade statistics to determine likely origin of sand used in their dredging and construction. © Galen Pardee.
