Antennae for a new frontier

part of Beyond What Drifts Us Apart; an interdisciplinary site-specific project, developed and curated by Elyse Tonna, which attempts to uncover the less dominant narratives associated with the environments surrounding historic coastal towers and the consequent relationships between the impacted landscapes and non-human communities. In 2023, the project centred within and around the Qalet Marku Tower in Baħar ic-Caghaq.

'Antennae for a new frontier' departs from the triangulated network that the tower forms part of in the northern part of the Malta and explores the potential of underlying and more intangible networks connected to the landscape. Adopting a multidimensional approach and making use of field studies, observations, and collaborative research with professionals, the work investigates intricate dynamics between the physical landscape, humans and more unseen relationships that were observed. 

The physical manifestations of these intangible networks setup a micro-network in and around the Tower area, partly hidden from view and embedded within the environment, but starkly present nonetheless. The sculptures are presented at intersections of these overlapping networks and stand as points of tuning into other ways of how we might come to understand and interact with the Tower and its landscape suggesting new frontiers for reconnection.

Tuning into a short-range FM transmission broadcast on the peninsula of Qalet Marku visitors could listen into a solarpunk manifesto translated in Maltese by Noah Fabri conceived as a form of soft-propaganda for an alternative way of living, and connecting with nature.

Beyond What Drifts Us Apart is a collaboration between Unfinished Art Space and the Istanbul-based association Diyalog Derneği, organisers of the Mahalla Festival, an international art event and platform for the Malta-based project.

Beyond What Drifts Us Apart is a project of the residency programs of the MagiC Carpets Platform, co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe program. The MagiC Carpets Platform brings together 21 European cultural organisations, coordinated by Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania.

Curator: Elyse Tonna

Artistic Director & advisor: Sabine Küper-Büsch

Participating Artists, Malta 2023: Samuel Ciantar (MT), Fernando P Ferreira (PT), Charlene Galea (MT), Alfred Graf (AT), Marija Rasa Kudabaite (LT), Rakel Vella (MT)

Photographs by Elisa Von Brockdorff