The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) Catalogue

Artists The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 126 A total lineal feet of edge (work-in-progress image) 2021 Mixed media on Fabriano Rosapina paper / Six sheets: 70 x 100cm (each) / Supported by National Arts Council, Singapore / Courtesy: The artist Born in Mumbai and now based in Singapore, Shubigi Rao spent her early childhood in Darjeeling before her family moved to a hut near Nainital at the foothills of the Himalayas, nestled in a densely forested region that forms a natural wildlife corridor between Jim Corbett National Park and Pilibhit Tiger Reserve. There she and her siblings became familiar with the sounds of the jungle — interspecies acoustic encounters rich in information about the remarkable creatures moving through the corridor: wolves, bears, leopards, tigers and elephants. So attuned were the children to the calls of insects, birds and monkeys that they could distinguish whether a given predator had fed or not. Information passes so quickly across the jungle, Rao observes, it is a wonder that predators are even able to catch any prey. As settlements, farms, towns and cities make ever- deeper incursions into such rich natural ecosystems, the intricate communication networks that help sustain them are disappearing. This understanding has a special poignancy for Rao, whose work over the past decade has focused on research into ‘libricide’ — the destruction of books and, by extension, songs, stories and dialects as a factor in broader ethnic disparities and cultural genocides. Under the umbrella title Pulp , this work has manifested as films, installations and two award- winning volumes of writing and photography. Rao’s work extends to studies of the nature of collecting, systems of classification and the development of alternative systems of sharing knowledge, including digital-era pirate libraries, in a geography defined by transnational structures from colonial cartographies, Cold War alignments and fraught processes of globalisation. For APT10, Rao draws on her youthful encounters with the rich acoustic space of the Nainital jungle, as well as recordings of bird calls that her family members, living in different parts of the world, shared with each other on messaging apps during the 2020 lockdown. Her installation comprises a film, photographs and mixed-media drawings — distinct but interwoven elements that serve to illuminate each other. In the film component, A small study of silence 2021, Rao foregrounds sound design, moving away from the documentary convention of voiceovers and interviews. The accompanying photographs, Two transects 2021, offer what Rao describes as points of illumination, or at least moments of stasis, while the drawings, titled A total lineal feet of edge 2021, function as a way of elaborating on ideas raised in the film. Working with previously unused footage and stills shot over several years, Rao documents spaces that retain a semblance of nature and its rich soundscape, such as the public parks and modest natural reserves of major world cities. The landscapes featured are selected for the relevance to the animal calls documented by her family. The point, however, is that these habitats are fragmented, isolated by urban geographies so vast that communication between these islands of non-human conversation breaks down. This breakdown, Rao argues, is just as prevalent in the human world, where barriers to communication and disappearing languages remain facts of modernisation and globalisation. With the institution of national languages — such as Hindi in post-independence India, and Mandarin among Chinese languages in Singapore — one tongue takes ascendency over others, becoming the language of education, of government and of written and oral culture. As one language attains primacy, so do certain ideas, narratives and stories. Ultimately, then, it is not the speakers who determine whether a given language vanishes or not, but the state. In that process, a corpus of knowledge and expression also faces disappearance. Nevertheless, the very fact of birdsong's existence suggests that even as linguistic structures and systems of relay fragment, the desire for communication among humans and non-humans alike remains profound and unquenchable. Reuben Keehan Shubigi Rao Born 1975, Mumbai, India Lives and works in Singapore A small study of silence (still) 2021 Single-channel film, sound, colour / Supported by National Arts Council, Singapore / Courtesy: The artist