Monsoon Assemblages, the European Research Council project that ran in the School of Architecture + Cities from 2016-2021, is exhibiting work at the Lethaby Gallery at Central St Martins until 30 April.
The exhibition, titled ‘Planetary Assemblages’ is a collaboration between the Monsoon Assemblages project team and Manifest Data Lab, a research partnership between Central St Martins and the British Antarctic Survey, Birkbeck College, University of London and the creative studio Proboscis.
Both projects visualise geo-physical and atmospheric data as ways of making climate change perceptible. The work acknowledges the representational nature of climate knowledge and the material, social and cultural ways we are all implicated in it.
Through drawings, maps, animations and models saturated with data from multiple sources, Planetary Assemblages proposes a critical engagement by bringing two groups of work into dialogue. This dialogue illustrates the power of art and design in order to explore public connections to the climate crisis and improve awareness of the material, social and cultural ways that humans are responsible.
Monsoon Assemblages was a five-year multi-disciplinary enquiry funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the University of Westminster. It studied the relations between changing monsoon climates and rapid urban growth in Chennai, Dhaka and Yangon, three of the largest cities in South Asia. The research project was proposed by Westminster’s Dr Lindsay Bremner to the ERC in 2015, who awarded her with a starting grant of €1.5m.
Since the project’s inception, the Monsoon Assemblages team have been involved in a number of exhibits, including the Milan Triennale in 2019, the Royal Academy Summer show (2020 - 2022), and a collaboration with the Office of Experiments to produce a joint installation at the Venice Biennale in 2021. The installation, titled ‘Between the Dragon Fly and the Barometer’, examined the Indian Ocean monsoon from the perspective of the Globe Skimmer dragonfly and the impact of climate change on it.
Manifest Data Lab is a transdisciplinary research group based at Central St Martins which is a partnership with the British Antarctic Survey, Birkbeck University of London and creative studio Proboscis. It is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by Tom Corby.
Talking about the exhibition, Dr Lindsay Bremner said: “It is an honour to exhibit our work alongside Tom Corby’s. The exhibition creates a wonderful dialogue between the Manifest Data Lab’s models of CO2 in the atmosphere and Monsoon Assemblages drawings of changing monsoonal conditions over south Asia.”
For more details of the exhibition, gallery location and opening hours, visit the Planetary Assemblages exhibition page.
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