From Leyte to Vienna: Governance, Migration, Technology

I’m chuffed for one of my awesome PhD supervisors, Prof. Claudia Tazreiter, to use my photograph for her upcoming talk in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna on 18 January 2024. Coincidentally, we met there in 2018 when I was the one giving a talk (in the exact room!), and this started a chain reaction of me eventually moving to Sydney in 2019 to do my PhD, which I submitted last month.

I took the image of this ship that ran aground in the Philippines in 2017 as artist-in-residence of Plan International, where I visited youth in Lewoleba in Indonesia; Chiang-Mai in Thailand, and Tacloban in the Philippines. In Tacloban, a local tricycle driver took me around the city to witness the aftermath of Supertyphoon Haiyan that devastated Tacloban in 2013. The image shows a fishing vessel that had run aground Philippine soil during Haiyan. 

Working with children and youth who were affected by the climate crisis is one of the most impactful and humbling times of my artistic practice, and I am still grateful to Plan for the opportunity to co-create artworks on climate with them. 

The residency was facilitated by Plan International’s offices in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines as well as the International Climate Initiative (IKI) based in Berlin. More on the residency outcomes here: https://www.international-climate-initiative.com/en/news/article/interview_to_know_the_colour_of_water/

Details of Claudia’s talk here: https://www.akbild.ac.at/de/universitaet/veranstaltungen/ausstellungen-vermittlung/2024/rundgang-2024/new-borders-of-migration-and-displacement-local-and-global-connection-and-collaboration-of-marginalized-life