Aisyah Ajib

THE INSTITUTE OF SHIFTING COLUMNS

Carl Jung defined synchronicity as 'meaningful coincidence, significantly related patterns of chance'. To discover how synchronicity can play a role in our objective, physical universe is one of the major challenges of the institute.

The institute's research lies within the discourse on present-century 'colonisation' and the related industrial histories of British and the Far East that has catalysed the global circuits of metal production.

Focusing on tin, a metal central to contemporary technology, and its extended ecologies, the proposal takes cue from Marcel Duchamp's tradition of 'readymades' by taking a piece of existing infrastructure (in this case a past-century bucket line dredger used to unearth alluvial tin deposits in Malaysia) and bringing it back to a trading location in the City that governs the global metals pricing: the London Metals Exchange (founded in 1877 and bought over by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing in December 2012).

The existing building then becomes a pedestal, monumentalising the infrastructure that becomes a physical representation of these invisible global networks and issues on tin. In the need to re-engage with the cycles of processes involved, the institute brings together various participants in the metals industry through a series of extensions and interventions that propound the future of metals trading, ethical mining and the cutting edge of laboratory research on e-waste recycling into one interface.