New Currents: Indian Ocean Futures
New Currents: Indian Ocean Futures is a research project that explores how evolving national ties and the exchange of ideas and material cultures shape the future of the Indian Ocean region. Examining the architecture, design, and spatial politics of port cities, the project asks: What currents can be traced? And what do these flows of spaces, goods, labour and knowledges teach us about the future of this region? By focusing on Rotterdam—a city shaped by harbour—New Currents opens dialogues with similar sites along the Indian Ocean.
New Currents raises questions about the diverse shared heritages and situated futures of the Indian Ocean territories. By addressing the conditions of economic and cultural competition and dominant power structures, the research departs from the design of land and water spaces that serve as vital nodes for remapping collaborations — networks of migration and exchange in this region. These spaces, seen as sites of ancient exchange, conquest and settlement, reveal transformations that inspire alternative ways of organising spaces, materials and political structures. The architecture and design of the infrastructures linking water and land—and the commodities, data, and supply chains flowing through them—reveal a multitude of stories that connect humans with the more-than-human through design.
Examples include the lingering songs and chants of sea traders who sailed the monsoon winds from Somalia to India; the trading forts and their goods that remain as architectural and design artefacts; spatial resistance against encroaching port and road projects on public land use; private sector monopolies over submarine data cables crossing trade routes of old empires; or the worship of ancestral sea deities and ocean mothers that influence contemporary design responses to climate disaster.
Geographically, the Indian Ocean (or Afrasian Sea) connects Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia through its coasts, inlands, archipelagos and oceanic regions. Although Western political powers and research communities still regularly overlook the region or see it only as a place or route of transit, the Indian Ocean remains influentialafr in global historical, political, cultural, economic, and ecological relations. It continues to grow in influence through evolving national alliances that impact borders and livelihoods in the region.
The programme draws on a global network of researchers and curators to explore and map multiple 'micro-histories', uncover historical legacies that continue to matter, and to review collective work around knowledge about this topic. Together, these practices show how the different territories of the Indian Ocean are connected in various ways, moving away from temporary or one-sided narratives that reduce the region to a space between the maritime superpowers of Asia, the United States and Europe. Over the course of several years, the project will consist of case studies, collaborations, and network meetings. The aim is to develop new vocabularies and narratives to describe the interconnected conditions of the ocean and its networks.
This project was previously presented as 'Modernisms along the Indian Ocean' and has been re-named 'New Currents: Indian Ocean Futures'.