Singapore, Post-nature

Joshua Comaroff will explore how Singapore’s history as a “crisis ecology” has accelerated the local experience of climate change – in which the contradictions of anthropogenic environment occur with greater speed and intensity than elsewhere. For reasons that range from extractive economy to ideologies of governance, the nation has come to embody a paradigm for the so-called Anthropocene. Comaroff argues that we can distil general principles from Singapore’s contemporary landscape, underlying emergent “post-natures” worldwide—which suggest broad-ranging ecological, aesthetic and political-administrative consequences. These involve moving beyond an imaginary of impending catastrophe, and towards a novel consideration of natural relations, and the role of the human. This talk will draw from the speaker’s research, as well as his practice designing public and private landscapes in the city.

Bio:  

Joshua Comaroff is a designer and cultural geographer, and Assistant Professor in Urban Studies at Yale-NUS College. He has published writing about architecture, urbanism, religion, and politics, with an Asian focus. In particular, his research focuses upon the effect of material and immaterial practices in the experience of the city. Together with Ong Ker-Shing, he is the author of Horror in Architecture (ORO Editions, University of Minnesota Press).