This Will Be Something: Cinematic Cartographies of the Post-Rural

This Will Be Something: Cinematic Cartographies of the Post-Rural

Dr Victoria Jane Marshall and Carlos G. Gomez

 

Scene 1

Co-fabricating a Garden Workshop

19-20 October, 2025
SDE3 Level 2 Bodhi Garden and Level 1 Exhibition Hall

Ruth Chong and Tang Wei

 

This workshop is for students interested in countermapping, film, and the garden as a spatial type. Open to all years of landscape architecture and architecture students. Only 20 spots available. Dinner and snacks provided.

 

Workshop Schedule 

19 October, 2025
2:00pm – 8:30pm

The Co-fabricating a Garden Workshop begins in the SDE3 Level 1 Exhibition Hall. The workshop brief will be introduced in conjunction with curated, reference materials and the sharing of periurban design through examples created by the workshop tutors. The introduction is followed by a guided tour of the SDE3 Level 2 Bodhi Garden through an alternative lens. After the tour, participants will kickstart brainstorming for a designed, garden element using materials supplied or found.  After sunset, there will be an exclusive screening of the mixed media installation, This Will Be Something: Cinematic cartographies of the post-rural in the Bodhi Garden.

20 October, 2025

9:00am – 9:00pm

On day two, participants will continue working on their garden elements. The garden element will be a response to the Bodhi Garden, the periurban concepts shared, and This Will Be Something. Each garden element must be mobile and will be situated in the Bodhi Garden. They will be part of the second screening of This Will Be Something in the Bodhi Garden after sunset. This second screening will be a response to the designed garden elements. Day two is also Deepavali and so, friends and family are invited to celebrate this special, festival of lights with us.

22 October, 2025

6:30pm – 7:00pm
Co-fabricating a Garden exhibition opening with tea at SDE3 Level 1 Exhibition Hall

 

Scene 2

Mixed Media Installation and Performance

Workshop Event

20 October, 2025
SDE3 Level 2 Bodhi Garden
7:30pm – 8:30pm

It is Deepavali. Friends and family are welcome

 

DOA Event

22 October, 2025 SDE3 Level 1 Exhibition Hall

6:30pm – 7:00pm Co-fabricating a Garden exhibition and tea

7:00pm – 8:30pm

Moderated by Dr Federico Simone Ruberto

This Will Be Something: Cinematic cartographies of the post rural is a multichannel audiovisual work conceived to unfold as both installation and performance. Rather than documenting a fixed reality the installation performs a dynamic site responsive cartography. Grounded in the research of Victoria Jane Marshall and her book Periurban Cartographies: Kolkata’s Ecologies and Settled Ruralities (2024), the piece reflects on how urban futures are being shaped by hybrid constellations of human and non-human forces — continually producing both intentional and accidental landscapes. It is a dynamic that can evoke the uncertainty of a cultivated, enclosed garden, a metaphor mirrored in the form and logic of the piece itself. The installation is structured around three distinct yet interconnected video channels, complemented by spatialized multichannel sound. The audiovisual system is governed by a hybrid logic of manual control and generative logic, with semantic associations and audio signal input guiding the selection and modulation of content. The system grows and shifts in response to both its internal logic and external input. As a result, no two iterations of the work are identical.

 

Team

Dr Victoria Jane Marshall is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture program at DOA. Marshall has a PhD in geography from NUS (2021), a MLA and Cert. UD from the University of Pennsylvania (1997), and a BLA from the University of New South Wales (1992). Victoria’s research is focused on how critical environmental research approaches can productively overlap with urban / architecture / landscape design representation and practice.

Carlos G. Gomez studied film and video at Columbia College in Chicago. He has collaborated on projects screened at numerous festivals and aired by broadcasters around the world, including the Berlinale, ImagineNATIVE, IDFA, NHK, ARTE, ZDF, SBC, the Sundance Channel, and Al-Jazeera. In addition to a long-standing interest in participatory film, his current interests are focused on taking the editing process into a performative and generative space.

Workshop Tutors:

Ruth Chong is an Architectural Designer currently working in Singapore. She has a M.Arch from NUS (2023). Her interest in the agentic encounters between humans and non-humans led to her involvement in a research position at Future Cities Lab (Global) (2024). She enjoys exploring diverse methods of making – as ways of thinking – to generate her creative projects.

Tang Wei is an Architectural Designer currently working in Singapore. She has an M.Arch from NUS (2024). Her research focuses on operational drawings and maps in design practice, particularly in periurban and urban-rural conditions. Her masters’ thesis, focusing on ecology practices of periurban Lombok, has been exhibited in the International Exhibition of Architecture Graduation Design in Taipei (2024) and the design exhibition ‘A Hundred Visions Beyond 10 Perspectives’ in Kaohsiung (2025).

India Research Assistants:

Dipanwita Manna is an executive committee member of PBBVM (Paschim Banga Vigyan Mancha/ West Bengal Science Platform) of Ward 131 of Kolkata, and an executive member of a govt. registered NGO in Jharkhand. She holds a M.Sc in Geography from the University of Calcutta (2017). She has assisted Victoria Marshall since 2018, and most recently led a team of researchers to support fieldwork for a DOA M.Arch/MLA option studio in 2025.

Ankit Bagchi is a Kolkata-based film curator focused on indigenous communities, human rights, and environmental issues. With a background in journalism, he has worked with festivals like Slamdance, Megacities Short Docs, and the Regina International Film Festival. Passionate about sustainable living, he documents indigenous knowledge and uses impact-driven audiovisuals to highlight climate change and environmental challenges.

DOA Research Assistants:

Hiral Patel is pursuing a M.Arch at NUS. She holds an Honours B. Arts in Architectural Studies with a Specialist in Design of Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism from the University of Toronto (2024), along with certificates in Global Studies and Sustainability of the Built Environment. Her interest lies in place based design. She likes to explore spatial practices and their representation in architecture, art, and the environment.

Lu Yixin  is pursuing a M.Arch at NUS. He brings a core interest in the humanities and an equally strong interest in contemporary culture issues within Southeast Asia. Yixin has a background in the Arts having worked in freelance capacities for arts organisations in Singapore such as Emergency Stairs and DECK (2018). He is interested in the dynamics of everyday life and understanding architecture through an anthropological lens.

SDE3 Level 2 Bodhi Garden – Beside the vending machines

Grantor

Ministry of Education Singapore
Academic Research Fund (AcRF) Tier 1 2024-2025.
Title: Enacting Periurban Practice: Exhibition pilot
PI: Victoria Jane Marshall marshall@nus.edu.sg