Intertidal Polyphonies: Sound, Text, and Art, PI Dr. Joanne Leow, Department of English at Simon Fraser University

This project works through the legacies of imperialism and colonialism in the urban intertidal zones of Singapore, Vancouver and Hong Kong. It considers the laws that govern them, our conceptions of nature, and what decolonial possibilities might lie in their futures. Works of fiction, poetry, theatre, installation art, photography, and other aesthetic modes of expression offer us, both in form and content, new ways of being together in these contested spaces even as we acknowledge their long and fraught histories. Writers and artists in thinking about these coastlines are also thinking through issues of land reclamation, the use of migrant labour, top-down urban planning, and reconceptualizations of “nature” and “ecology."