blog post
҉҉҉
blog post ҉҉҉
Anthropologist Samwel Grima speaking at our Futuring Islands event in November 2022.
Last November, Nneka Egbuna, Samwel Grima, and Jordi Vegas Macias shared their research and ideas in areas of food, survival and sustainability.
Samwel is an anthropologist researching a PhD on land governance issues in Maltese agriculture. Through ethnographic fieldwork, he is exploring the ways in which different stakeholders use land in a resource-scarce environment, as well as how they experience the official and unofficial processes that regulate land distribution. By following the discourses of farmers, his research places farmland within an economic, legal, ecological and social nexus in which the values of rural land are changing both from within and from outside the agricultural sector.
Read Samwel’s intervention below.
The European Union’s smallest state, is a resource poor island that has nevertheless outgrown its size and is now one of the world’s most densely populated nations. Over two years of fieldwork, primarily with farmers, I looked at conflicts over the use and distribution of a scarce resource, farmland, with a particular interest in the arguments and moral assumptions that lie behind competing claims to the land.
My research, therefore, focuses on how the food system is situated in physical space. As a result, when I was asked to contribute to Farfara, I faced something of a conundrum. Here I was being asked to consider a hypothetical space that seemed to float between pure virtuality and a physicality that was quasi-mythical. While difficult to reconcile, these opposing poles presented two possible approaches to Farfara. On one hand, thinking in terms of a physical space, real or not, is an opportunity to engage in ‘world building’. On the other, the project’s founders invite us to think instead how ‘a cultural programme [for the capital of culture] can be imagined without spatial dynamics’. This seems to me to imply a virtual space, a virtual capital of culture.
Let me start with world building, since this is something that Maltese farmers have been doing quite a lot recently, in response to pressures on their landholdings. In 2020, a landmark constitutional court ruling deemed the law protecting farm leases as contravening the fundamental human right of landowners to the enjoyment of private property. The farmer who leased land from this landowner was evicted, and a raft of similar cases were opened against other tenant farmers. This phenomenon stemmed in part from the fact that speculators had been acquiring farmland, hoping to secure, sometimes through political networks, a building permit, or else, parcelling it out for sale to well-to-do urbanites seeking recreational green space. As a result, land prices shot through the roof, and while some farmers faced expropriation, most were also priced out of the land market. This was particularly problematic in a sector where land had been mismanaged for a long time. The state, which owns and leases out 50% of all farmland, had allowed scores of tenants, whether they were farming or not, to hold onto and hoard their fields. Land that was freed up and issued by tender, on the other hand, went to the highest bidder, who very often turned out not to be a farmer.
At the risk of sounding somewhat cynical, I’d like to draw a parallel between this situation and Valletta 2018, Malta’s first capital of culture. One of the more contentious enduring legacies of V18 is the proliferation of bars, cafes and restaurants in the capital. Before that, the capital had been seen as starved of activity and life. The public perception was that the city went to sleep early, so to speak. In farming, through a combination of land access issues and market woes, there is also a general discourse of loss. In the years leading up to and following 2018, there has been a sense that, while Valletta was rejuvinated and became an entertainment destination again, a less visible heritage was lost as residents were priced out, a rich past of revelling was given new life in a bland way, and private interests incrementally took over public spaces. A widespread sense of loss, particularly through urbanisation, leads to a desire to rediscover. But increasingly, experiencing our green spaces and rural traditions is only possible through commercial activities such as farm tours, or else through the acquisition of land. But recreational and professional land users are set on a collision course in the countryside. The smells of manure, the sounds of farm machinery and animals, the drift of pesticides, do not respect rural boundaries. Similarly, the spillover of noise in Valletta, particularly after a law extending music hours to 1am, has brought residents into conflict with commercial establishments. Regeneration has happened, but at what cost?
After concerted efforts by farming activist groups, the state announced a historic land reform aimed at protecting farmers and farmland, which would tackle these interlinked issues. During fieldwork, I was surprised to find out that a number of Maltese farmers were saying that such protections could only truly be guaranteed through the creation of a classification system that would define ‘real’ farmers according to strict criteria, and institute comprehensive monitoring of income, expenditure, land use and so on. This would among other things be tied to the application system for agricultural structures, which have been used around Malta by developers as a pretext to illegal conversion to touristic or residential buildings. It would be tied to the acquisition of land, both on the market and through leases, and it would also guarantee a fairer distribution of subsidies. A fair and functioning food system, in their view, is a more surveilled system, where activity is monitored and stored in digital repositories.
The problem with this is that the scarcity of land in Malta means that it is subject to several conflicting demands. Landowners argue that farming denies them of a just rent for the use of their property, as well as the ability to sell it for a good price. Others point to the environmental impacts of farming, not just on wildlife but also on water use. Hobbyist smallholders, who are numerous in Malta, face potential discrimination in the allocation of resources if professional farmers are privileged. Farmers assume that their work constitutes the best use of the land, presenting themselves as guardians of food security and of the landscape itself. This position is by no means uncontested. Malta imports 70-80% of its food supply. While farmers emphasize its vulnerability, others argue that it is impossible to attain a reasonable degree of self-sufficiency, owing to Malta’s high population density. They also argue that threats are overstated, when one considers Malta’s proximity to the surrounding Mediterranean littoral.
The programme for a physical Farfara 2031 capital of culture should therefore address the potential for gentrification. As in many other cases, limiting forces of the market involves building stronger, more complicated systems that need more work to function well. These systems themselves are, in addition, by design exclusionary in their own right, and subject to contestation.
While preparing this presentation, I held out hope that in my hyperlocal research I would also find something to say about the non-physical, potentially infinite space that a virtual capital of culture would present. Unlike a physical capital of culture, a virtual one would not contain, although it might influence, aspects of material existence, such as food and drink. Consumption would occur elsewhere. This seems at first glance to be a mirror image of what a physical capital of culture would look like. But actually, I’d like to suggest that the alienation of a virtual capital of culture from the actual production and consumption of food is in some ways analogous to the way in which farmers talk about how Malta sources its food. With the islands so reliant on imports, food production appears to be a process that occurs largely in a distant place, which the authorities have no control over and are largely unconcerned with.
The previous discussion also hinted at another disconnect in rural areas. Through squatting, the illicit trading of field parcels, the illicit fragmentation of field parcels, the alteration of field boundaries, and the construction of illegal structures, Malta’s planning and land ownership registries do not really reflect the reality of ownership and use on the ground. Some farmers, who would like to know what land is actually available for lease, as well as environmentalist groups, who protest against the privatisation of public pathways, have protested this situation.
I realise that this reflection has brought the virtual capital of culture squarely back to the physical realm. But by highlighting the ways in which physical detachment in the ‘non-spatially located’ capital approximates, in some ways, a physical capital, a cultural programme could foreground the fact that any capital of culture occurs in a space that is disconnected, to varying degrees, from its food system, whether because it is highly globalised, or because it has been allowed to govern itself at the local level. It could then relate back to the question of how our food system is susceptible to gentrifying forces, and what role the capital of culture itself has in those forces.
I’d like to close this discussion by reflecting a bit further on what a virtual community in a non-spatially located capital would look like. While the classification system pushed for by farmers in order to combat gentrification seeks to limit as much as possible access to land to a particular kind of land user, the professional farmer, I’d like to introduce briefly an online farming community that is premised on the exact opposite terms: being open to all. Online space, after all, is potentially infinite. Hobbyists of Farming, Trees and Plants, is a space where farmers, hobbyists, and casual observers alike discuss matters relating to farming and gardening. Questions range from how much water an indoor plant needs, to what pesticides are necessary to combat a particularly resistant pest. This space is also host to controversial debates, relating to the land reform for example, or the politics of water distribution, or corruption in the farmers’ market. It formed an unprecedented bridge between Malta’s urban communities, which had long been severed from their rural roots, with the farmers who command so much influence over Maltese people’s perceptions of who they are.
Could there be a parallel here with the very gatekeeper-y and sometimes aloof artworld. Could this group be taken as a model for a democratic, open, perhaps awkward and honest online community? This is not an entirely spontaneous or unmoderated space. The group’s moderators, a mix of committed hobbyists and farmers, do not tolerate excessive leg-pulling, in their desire to ensure that the space remains safe for people to ask ‘stupid questions’. They also weed out, sometimes a little arbitrarily, posts that have party political content. This position itself is not arbitrary: I think that the moderators understand that their page is a rare example of independence from state influence, and recognise that permitting party political discussion would limit the ability of members to debate controversial issues without the discussion degenerating into a slagging match. What would such a community look like for a European Capital of Culture?
The interesting thing about this page is that it has built part of its legitimacy on the fact that some of the members are ‘real’ farmers, markers of ‘genuinity’, direct sources of knowledge, who share pictures of their own crops, brag about bountiful harvests, answer the questions of curious laypersons, but most importantly, debate among themselves, write in-jokes on the posts of farmers they know, and air in public discussions that would normally take place in private, between knowledgeable practitioners debating the finer points of their craft. The group begins to appear as a space where farmers perform their role as ‘real farmers’ in an organic, rather than a strictly classified way. Online spaces are sometimes lauded as places where actors are free to be who they want to be, to reinvent themselves. Perhaps what they need is a little less of that and a little more upfront-ness.
Farfara Archives
*
Farfara Archives *
Farfara Archives is a collection of documents and artefacts belonging to six historical characters spanning almost three centuries, all presenting possible evidence of the existence of the island of Farfara. The island appears off the coast of Malta, in several maps dating from the 17th and 18th centuries.
The collection provides an opportunity to address the mechanisms behind the production of accepted truth through the reordering of documentation.
Elise Billiard Pisani & Margerita Pulè
part of Memories Gone Wild, ISELP, 27 January - 25 March 2023
Mirza Aboul Taleb Khan (also known as Abu Taleb Tabrizi or Abu Taleb Isfahani)(1752–1805/1806)was probably an Indian tax collector working for the British. His legacy is a detailed account of his travels under the title “Masir Talib fi Bilad Afranji”. This travelogue is extraordinary not only for its reverse description from East to West, but also because it presents a unique description of the island of Farfara, including a list of indigenous fauna and flora.
Antonio Saxo Couvin (1752 - unknown) was known as François Boie in France, and as a French citizen was a frequent business traveller between Marseille and Malta. He used his double identity in order to leave Malta and subsequently hid in Farfara when he was prosecuted by his wife’s family. Although he was born in the same year as Mirza Aboul Taleb Khan, a relationship has yet to be found between them.
Abbé Achille Gustave Landais (1853-1928) probably never left France during his lifetime, excepting a mandatory trip to the Vatican, but he left behind an extraordinary collection of plants, fossils, precious stones and gold that were kept hidden by the Church until his collection, or part of it, surfaced in an auction sale. The holder of the items was the grandson of an Algerian soldier who had been a friend of Landais in Soissons during WWI. The collection hints at a previously unknown Phoenician settlement in Farfara.
Carmelo Borg Pisani (1914/15 - 1942) was a Maltese artist and Italian Fascist spy. He spent over a year on Farfara, intercepting radio messages to pass on to the Italian authorities. While he was on Farfara, it seems that Borg Pisani also explored the island’s topology, making notes of its geographic peculiarities, and exploring what appeared to be an abandoned mine. He was eventually caught and was sentenced to death by hanging for espionage.
Asunción Axiela La Sorte was a shadowy character in history, born into a privileged family in 1930s Spain. How she came to know about Farfara is unclear. Many questions remain unanswered, however documentation has surfaced showing Axiela La Sorte posing as an air hostess assisting the President Gorbachev and his wife during the 1989 USA-USSR summit off the coast of Malta.
Elise Billiard Pisani (1979 - ) is a French anthropologist and a visiting lecturer at the University of Malta. She has recently argued that the famous book “The Count of Monte Cristo” written by Alexandre Dumas should actually be entitled “The Count of Farfara”, since this island is the true inspiration for the novel. Dumas came to know of Farfara from his father, a general of Bonaparte’s army which ‘liberated’ Malta in 1798. At the time of writing, Billiard Pisani’s findings show that Farfara was for a time a refuge for slaves and that General Dumas, himself born into slavery in Martinique, had sworn to help them, against Bonaparte’s pro-slavery policy.
While the history of Farfara can be seen in parallel with the Maltese archipelago, it also provides the opportunity to research fictitious states, historical myth, and contemporary public culture to create something that is quasi-believable within a simulated bureaucratic framework.
Since the 17th century, the island of Farfara has disappeared from maps, however its name occasionally appears in certain texts as late as the first half of the 19th century; ultimately, very little is known about this island. After extensive research, a hazy picture has begun to appear, one of an obscure and mysterious atoll which, though small, may have played a vital role in Mediterranean geopolitics, as the fourth (inhabited) island of the Maltese archipelago. Several personal testimonies, both historical and contemporary, although fragmentary, provide some evidence that Farfara not only existed, but that its intermittent intangibility has allowed it to play host to enigmatic events on the world stage.
The archives are made of a collection of artefacts and documents linked with six diverse personages, dubbed the six Farfara ‘witnesses’. After extensive research, it seems that these are the only six people who have documented travel to the island, although this cannot be fully verified. The six witnesses could be described as reluctant, since - apart from anthropologist Dr Elise Pisani - they have not voluntarily made their knowledge public.
Thus, the material presented here consists of their six private collections, either donated after their deaths, or sourced through subsequent research.
Sustaining survival in islands of isolation
Karsten Xuereb
“Boris has just given me a summary of his views. He is a weather prophet. The weather will continue bad, he says. There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves. The hero, then, is not Time, but Timelessness. We must get in step, a lock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape. The weather will not change.” Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller, 1934.
Cells of nutrition, cells of collaboration, cells of incarceration
In Forster’s short story on isolation ‘The Machine Stops’ (first published 1909, then 1928), people survive through isolation, feeding their bodies and minds though technological means that connect them in terms of engineered nutritional means and communication tools. The small yet technologically-rich spaces individuals inhabit alone are described as ‘hexagonical in shape, like the cell of a bee.’ The reader gets the impression that more than surviving, society in this dystopic, post-apocalyptic world has chosen to live this way, as opposed to try to revive, recover and nurture anew its relationship with the Earth and the atmosphere outside.
Blogpost ********
Blogpost ********
Speculative sustenance and survival
In Lyotard’s text ‘A Postmodern Fable’ (1993), set 4.6 billion solar years from now, soon before the moment when our solar system will come to an end, and with it Earth, turning the system into a nova, the possibility of survival is speculative but significant, depending on the way humans will have spent the interim period in preparing to remain alive. (Since this text was completed and posted in October 2022, and nuclear threats abound in relation to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, one sincerely hopes we get that far).
The fable focuses on the matter of survival by addressing the development of the human brain / spirit / consciousness in a distinct way from the body. To achieve this, human efforts across various fields mentioned, ranging from science to sports, from technology to the arts, will have had to address, in a coordinated manner across the planet and across the millenia, the source of energy to our brains, and how these many transform and transition into a form that may survive outside of the new state of our solar system (the nova).
The key lies in reverse entropy, or negentropy: rather than allowing flows of energy outwards of living systems, this natural dissipation is reorganised and rechannelled to sustain forms of life, primarily the human brain, in ways that transform it and allow it to survive.
This aspect of the fable recalls another short piece of fiction, namely ‘Entropy’, by Thoman Pynchon, published in revised versions in 1958, 1959 and 1984, a poststructuralist and postmodernist short story on the process of dissipating energy, and in contrast with Lyotard’s text, looking at the inexorable loss of human structures and the inevitability of chaos. The epigraph to the text you’re reading also acts as one to Entropy.
In contrast to Forster’s short story, Lyotard, whose complexity is here very simplistically represented, lays his trust in the future survival of the human being in the separation of mind from body, on the development of human nature in a form that challenges current perceptions of what that means, and technology. On the one hand, Forster’s short story seems to encourage a reading that trusts in nature, and is diffident of people giving up their humanity. On the other, Lyotard seems to suggest that the future of humanity lies in its innate ability to adapt, evolve and change into forms that may retain a kind of essence, identified with the mind, while changing everything else. Significantly, at the end of the fable / fabulation, Lyotard recommends “not that it be believed, but that we reflect on it.”
Unequal evolution
One may argue that both Forster and Lyotard engage with evolutionary aspects of humanity, the former reverting from too much dependence on technology, the latter glimpsing possible forms in the future.
In a way that is quite distinct from the short story and the philosophical / fictional / visionary / speculative text discussed above, a recent study by Prof David Hugh-Jones from the University of East Anglia’s School of Economics, points out what seems to be a contradiction inherent to the evolutionary process of humans. The research he led argues that while people are still evolving, natural selection seems to favour those with lower earnings and poorer education, leading to a downward, or devolutionary trend, rather than an upward, or evolutionary one.
The study by Prof Hugh-Jones argues that natural selection effects are more significant in groups with lower income and less education, among younger parents as opposed to older or more mature ones, people living alone and not with a partner as well as those with more lifetime sexual partners. At the same time, natural selection seems to be pushing against genes associated with high educational attainment, high earnings, low risks of ADHD and other major depressive disorders as well as a low risk of coronary artery disease.
Prof Hugh-Jones said: “Darwin’s theory of evolution stated that all species develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. / Scores which correlated with lower earnings and education predicted having more children, meaning those scores are being selected for from an evolutionary perspective. Scores which correlated with higher earnings and education predicted having fewer children, meaning that they are being selected against.”
The brainless non-human
On the one hand, the survival of humanity may be argued to hinge on the relationship between people and their brain. On the other, there seems to be a natural occurrence of what may be perceived to be a diametrically opposed existence, namely non-human brainlessness. The phenomenon is fairly well know and has been documented both in the fields of science as well as the arts.
In the Japanese small resort of Shirahama, washed by the Pacific Ocean, within the premises of the University of Kyoto’s Department of Marine Biology, Prof Shin Kubota spends all his time, seven days a week, from dawn to dusk, completely immersed in and surrounded by Turritopsis, popularly known as the immortal jellyfish. He is the only known scientist to have managed to grow and bring back to life the Turritopsis in captivity. To him, in a loving and tender way that is reminiscent of a happier and optimistic version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this tiny creature is the most miraculous species of the animal kingdom.
Prof Kubota suggests that studying the Turritopsis seriously may help solve the mystery of human mortality. The Turritopsis are composed of 98% water. Their liquid bodies include a stomach and heart but, significantly, no brain. They resemble little bells and move as if they are dancing. The directors of the film Spira Mirabilis (2016), Massimo D’Anolfi and Martina Parenti, note how ‘(i)mitating the dance of Turritopsis, we moved (...) between sandy bottoms, scientific laboratories, and microscopic images. We dove into Shin’s watery world and scientific research where we discovered images of extraordinary beauty. Microscopic lenses enabled us to see the invisible and reveal what is normally hidden. The small can instantly become great.’
They also note how the visual power of the images lead to a deep reflection on the beauty and transience of life, and the responsible behaviour humans should adopt toward nature. They quote Shin Kubota saying: “Nature is so beautiful, if humans disappeared, then there would be peace.“ Prof Kubota also notes: “We humans are extremely intelligent, but we have yet to evolve. We are smart enough to gain biological immortality, but we do not deserve it yet.”
For more information see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithmic_spiral and https://spiramirabilis-film.com/ .
Exploring evolution and equality
If human beings are not ready yet to defeat death and live forever, if ever but not now, then when? Possibly sometime soon in the future, and hopefully well before our solar system gives way?
If we seek the seeds of survival in the process of development in life in general and in human beings more in particular, and therefore relate back to the human dimension as a source of hopeful development in survival and the exploration of well-being, Juno Roche identifies gender explorers as the saviours of the planet and the human race because they are at the forefront of exploring the boundaries of being human. Possibly the bond between environmental responsibility, climatic action, planetary commitment and the transformation of the human being stems from those children and young people who are brave and keen on exploring who we are and who we can be in ourselves, in relation to our communities and to planetary life in general.
Notes and further reading
Salient extracts from Forster’s short story:
Getting rid of the body ... : “By these days it was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant was examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength were destroyed. Humanitarians may protest, but it would have been no true kindness to let an athlete live; he would never have been happy in that state of life to which the Machine had called him; he would have yearned for trees to climb, rivers to bathe in, meadows and hills against which he might measure his body. Man must be adapted to his surroundings, must he not? In the dawn of the world our weakly must be exposed on Mount Taygetus, in its twilight our strong will suffer euthanasia, that the Machine may progress, that the Machine may progress, that the Machine may progress eternally.” P17
... isn’t a good idea : They wept for humanity, those two, not for themselves. They could not bear that this should be the end. Ere silence was completed their hearts were opened, and they knew what had been important on the earth. Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven. Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly the garment had seemed heavenly at first, shot with colours of culture, sewn with the threads of self denial. And heavenly it had been so long as it was a garment and no more, man eould shed it at will and live by the essence that is his soul, and the essence, equally divine, that is his body. The sin against the body-it was for that they wept in chief; the centuries of wrong against the muscles and the nerves, and those five portals by which we can alone apprehend - glozing it over with talk of evolution, until the body was white pap, the home of ideas as colourless, last sloshy stirrings of a spirit that had grasped the stars. P38
The idea of space/humans being the measure because of their body: “You know that we have lost the sense of space. We say ‘space is annihilated,’ but we have annihilated not space, but the sense thereof. We have lost a part of ourselves. 1 determined to recover it, and 1 began by walking up and down the platform of the railway outside my room. Up and down, until 1 was tired, and so did recapture the meaning of ‘Near’ and ‘Far.’ ‘Near’ is a place to which 1 can get quickly on my feet, not a place to which the train or the air¬ ship will take me quickly. ‘Far’ is a place to which 1 cannot get quickly on my feet; the vomitory is ‘far,’ though 1 could be there in thirty- eight seconds by summoning the train. Man is the measure. That was my first lesson. Man’s feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong. Then 1 went further: it was then that 1 called to you for the first time, and you would not come.” P18
Escaping in the spirit vs escaping in the body: “It was thus that she opened her prison and escaped-escaped in the spirit: at least so it seems to me, ere my meditation closes. That she escapes in the body - 1 cannot perceive that. She struck, by chance, the switch that released the door, and the rush of foul air on her skin, the loud throbbing whispers in her ears, told her that she was facing the tunnel again, and that tremendous platform on which she had seen men fighting. They were not fighting now. Only the whispers remained, and the little whimpering groans. They were dying by hundreds out in the dark.” P37
Over-specialisation, missing the wood for the trees: :To attribute these two great developments to the Central Committee, is to take a very narrow view of civilization. The Central Committee announced the developments, it is true, but they were no more the cause of them than were the kings of the imperialistic period the cause of war. Rather did they yield to some invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which, when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible. To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.” P30
The environment away from the technologically-dependent and artificially illuminated and ventilated pods is very poor, the air unbreatheable, and atmospheric conditions too harsh for survival without clothing and respiratory equipment designed on purpose to guarantee safety for limited amounts of time. However, it is not clear how much of the incompatability between people and the planetary conditions stems from the degradation of natural conditions or from the course society set for itself in detachment from nature. In turn, the undefined degree of impossible living conditions does hint at some physical degradation that may have followed a natural disaster or one induced by humans.
To make matters more complex, people seem to have invested their lives in the perfection of artificial intelligence represented by the Machine. However, not everyone is satisfied with the abdication of humanity of its significance in shaping their contexts, as represented by Kuno, one of the two main characters in the short story together with his mother.
Farfara News
Floating cities, flying cities …
Thanks to climate change, sea levels are lapping up against coastal cities and communities. In an ideal world, efforts would have already been made to slow or stop the impact. The reality is that humanity living within 60 miles of a coast will eventually need to move or adapt.
Is one option is to move onto a floating city?
This image is a contribution to #farfara2031 by @timesuplinz for a workshop, held in 2022.
Could a digital twin of Tuvalu preserve the island nation before it’s lost to the collapsing climate?
When Tuvalu vanishes beneath rising seas, its diaspora still want somewhere to call home – and that could be a virtual version of the tiny Pacific nation.
