Elephant in the Room and Other Creatures

DESIGN EARTH‘s latest project is a series of fables that addresses the elephant in the room—the climate crisis—by animating charismatic figures from natural history museums. This design research identifies and leverages figures from the collections all while unsettling the museum apparatus—the devices, archives, histories, and audiences. Some such figures include a taxidermy of an African matriarch elephant, the skeleton of a stranded blue whale, and a composite structure of a Diplodocuscarnegii. The fragmentary remains of such creatures are animated, brought back to life, so to speak in rhyming verse, colorful imagery, and with some poignant humor. These speculative afterlives stir up potent trouble on the breath-taking capture of life in the Anthropocene to ask how cultural institutions may be responsible to calls for decolonisation and decarbonisation. In Singapore, this hands-on, participatory workshop will focus on the cultural prehistory, present, and speculative futures of the Singapore saltwater (estuarine) crocodile and the Malayan tiger. Facilitated by Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy, and DESIGN EARTH team member Kelly Koh. Beginning with the Artist Talk on 13 June, participants will engage in DESIGN EARTH creative methodologies including site visits and the building of a research archive while looking into the facts and fictions of these creatures and their homes.

For registration, please visit here.