Panel 3
Undoing Land/sea
Friday 7 May 2021
1:00 - 2:00 pm (PDT)
Panel speakers:
Alice Te Punga Sommerville
Diyan Achjadi
Adrian de Leon
Moderated by Dory Nason
“Imagining all that mountain beneath”:
Pacific Writing, continental shelves
Alice te punga Sommerville
What are the edges of an island? Where does land become sea? We are so used to geographic maps that trace lines between what is visible from above – from the air - that is feels like a contradiction to “imagin[e]” the relationship between island and ocean in any other way. Writing in Hawai’i, the Māori poet Vernice Wineera marvels that an island is “so large it is disorienting/ imagining all that mountain beneath.” Although one could read this as an attempt to enlarge the island by arguing for an extension of its land-ness (“all that mountain”), in this paper I will respond to Wineera’s invitation to think about the invisible ever-present bulk of the continental shelf as a way to engage the vast range of Pacific creative and critical writing that remains invisible from above. A continental shelf is the legal and geological extension of EEZ determined by underwater land mass; but perhaps the continental shelf also refers to the restrictive colonial structures of knowledge that continue to shape the ways we come to know (or not know) Pacific writing.
The Space of Water
Diyan Achjadi
Oceans, waters and islands appear frequently in my recent drawings, prints and animations.
Originating from nusantara – literally, “the islands between,” otherwise known as Indonesia – the relationship between bodies of land and bodies of water is central to my understanding of place. The functions of water as simultaneously a border and territorial perimeter, as well as a passageway for trade, migration and empire, are starting points in considering the ways that images and information travel, and the residues left behind through that process. Focusing on a few recent works, my presentation will elaborate on my use of histories and strategies of decoration and ornamentation in the construction of fictional landscapes and intricate tableaus as a means to draw out narratives, connections and intersections between seemingly disparate locations and histories.
Diyan Achjadi is a Vancouver-based artist who works with printmaking, drawing, and animation to explore the ways that surface ornamentation and illustrated printed matter can function as archives documenting the circulation of ideas in visual form. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, her formative years were spent moving between multiple educational, political, and cultural systems. Diyan received a BFA from the Cooper Union (New York, NY) and an MFA from Concordia University (Montreal, QC). She has exhibited widely at galleries and film festivals across Canada and beyond. Recent projects include Hush, an animation commissioned by Emily Carr University for the City of Vancouver Public Art Program (2021); NonSerie (In Commute), part of How far do you travel?, a year-long exhibition on the exterior of public buses, commissioned by the Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG) in partnership with Translink BC (2019); and Coming Soon!, a monthly series of prints installed at sites slated for construction and development, commissioned by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program, documented with a book-length publication in 2020. Diyan is a Professor in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
barangay: towards an offshore poetics of filipino diaspora
Adrian de leon
This talk and performance introduces an alternative poetics and ethics of the barangay: an outrigger boat and the basic unit of Philippine socio-political life. Following the lead of scholars and writers of the Black diaspora (Édouard Glissant, Christina Sharpe, Nourbese Philip, Saidiya Hartman), of the Native Pacific (Craig Santos Perez, Vicente Diaz), and of the Asian diaspora (Erin Suzuki, Kale Bantigue Fajardo, Neferti Tadiar), this work imagines the contemporary Filipino diaspora as one set asail in the wake of the catastrophes of capitalism, empire, and globalization. In the process of poetic boat-building, it meditates on what it means to navigate the ocean in a reparative way, opening the way to bring other disposssessed people on board to safety, and particularly those from the Atlantic for whom the boat is a structure of death. All pieces performed will be taken from the forthcoming collection, barangay: an offshore poem (Buckrider Books/Wolsak & Wynn, 2021)