Inspired by its latest exhibition, The Sovereign Forest by Amar Kanwar, Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA) is launching a special research project on Aug 12 to understand a situation that is relevant to Singapore and the South-east Asian region. The haze.

“We are affected by the end product, the haze, but the origin is monoculture, industrialisation of land ... We don’t see that and how the haze affects people at the point of origin. From Kanwar’s work, we learnt how he goes down to these places to comprehend the situation directly,” said Ute Meta Bauer, founding director of NTU CCA and part of the curatorial team behind the exhibition.

Focusing on the exhaustive struggles over the resource-rich land of Odisha in east India, The Sovereign Forest by Amar Kanwar is based on a long-term collaboration with independent media activist Sudhir Pattnaik, the Samadrusti media activist group, and designer and filmmaker Sherna Dastur. Kanwar, 52, has made a name for himself in the international arts world through films and multimedia works, which explore the politics of power, violence and justice. He has participated in recognised global arts platforms such as Documenta (2002, 2007 and 2012).

From over a period of 10 years, his findings about the industrial intervention in Odisha are spread across the dark cavernous museum spaces of NTU CCA, starting with a floor-to-ceiling screening of his intentionally slow-moving film The Scene Of Crime (2011). This is followed by three large handmade books placed on tables for easy flipping — films are projected onto its pages, alongside timeless local fables or accounts of the assassination of the leader of possibly the largest mass movement of workers, peasants and tribals in post independent India.

A constellation of evidence such as photographs, lists of residents, land records, tax receipts and proofs of occupancy are presented on a long wall that circles an alcove filled with 272 individual species of rice grown in Odisha, collected and harvested by a former schoolteacher-turned-rice farmer and seed activist.

“We are looking into artistic practices that address topics through different medium over long periods of time, and as we are part of the university, we are introducing to the public how artists generate knowledge and investigate these topics. Even though the museum has a different mandate, we see ourselves as a research centre,” Ute said, sharing with TODAY how the exhibition ties in with the centre’s overall direction.

Using Kanwar’s working method, artistic language and multi-disciplinary collaboration, The Haze: An Inquiry held at The Lab space of NTU CCA, gathers a core group of specialists from varied fields of law, natural and social sciences, literature, art and architecture, media and theatre, brought together in a series of workshops to explore the haze situation as an environmental, human and legal challenge within the context of its impact across the region.

“We realise it is interesting to learn more about these issues by talking to both academics and activists,” Ute observed. These diverse perspectives may even shed new insights and greater understanding of the situation.

“We are always talking about how haze is a health hazard but perhaps the more important issue is the homogenisation of agriculture,” Khim Ong, deputy director of exhibitions, residencies and public programmes, pointed out. “So perhaps through better understanding of the situation, we can address these pertinent issues,” she added.

The Sovereign Forest exhibition runs from July 30 to Oct 9. Special Project The Haze: An Inquiry runs from Aug 12 to Sept 25.