(Oil Palm) Plantation Archives and Infrastructures of Care
Michelle Lai
SINGAPORE
Michelle Lai’s 2021 PARDICOLOR funded project ‘(Oil Palm) Plantation Archives and Infrastructures of Care’ invites the audience to consider the origins of the palm oil plantation, contemplate the potent social and ecological legacies of this mass scale agro-industrial system, and finally to speculate beyond an all too familiar plantationocene.
In Michelle’s own words “A serious issue in Southeast Asia, the legacy of oil palm plantations is a remnant from colonial times when the Dutch and English had sought to cultivate the valuable commodity for manufacture in Europe. With the support of the grant, [I] was able to dig further into the colonial archives to understand the historical trajectories that led to today's environmental issues, and spent time working with captured field recordings, media clips taken from various sources - in the Netherlands, across rainforests, and from digital sources - to respond with audio provocations daring us to dream alternatives beyond the plantationocene we are currently within.”
We feature here Michelle’s zine entitled ‘Kelapa Sawit: the Seven Gates’ containing elements of archival research accompanied with pantun (a form of Malay verse used to express intricate ideas and emotions), alongside two freeform explorations of the oil palm complex.
To experience more of Michelle’s exploration into the evolution of multi-species dialogues you can visit the ‘Office of New Tropicalities’ website at officeofnewtropicalities.cargo.site/.
All writings by Michelle.
‘Kelapa Sawit: the Seven Gates’ is a meditation on the legacy of the Dutch on oil palm plantations in Indonesia. The zine is a compilation of archival material, writings and material play in response to archival research. It is a visual collage of light and shadow, surfacing the stories and voices in and around the plantation.
On Magic in Oil Palm Plantation Realities
Exploring sonic and visual alternatives in terms of where we are in the plantationocene today, with the context of the Riaus in Indonesia. This is [a] personal exercise I undertook, to reflect on the present situations and how through restitching, I ask questions about where magic could arise from. A video and sound collage from a news - advertisement of palm oil plantations in Jambi.
“Sound and visuals are used to propose pathways, ways of seeing in the post-plantationocene, in the context of the Riaus, Indonesia and the oil palm speculative futures in Singapore — for convivial living and dying - amidst ecotoxicities.”
Dialogue with Machines
Using prompts, ‘Dialogue with Machines’ wonders how conversations with an AI around plantation agriculture would materialise, and how we may find inroads to reframe the broader dialogue.
“With each infrastructural intervention, we are perpetuating cycles of production, consumption and trade movements. This takes us to the plantation as centre, highlighting the magic that lies in the ruins, locating the ruins and introducing the worlds of more-than-human life that arrives with apocalyptic infrastructure.”