AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting | The Malacca Dilemma: Reclaiming Futures Built on Sand | Talk by Michaela Büsse

AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting: Transitions

PanSandy transitions: the uncertain place of sand in the making of worlds, politics, and knowledge 

Michaela Büsse: The Malacca Dilemma: Reclaiming Futures Built on Sand.

Taking Malacca’s silted grounds as a starting point, this contribution suggests reading land reclamation ­– a practice aimed at consolidating sand into land mass – alongside the matter’s vibrancy. A former trading hub in Southeast Asia, Malacca today is partly a ghost town, developing land and real estate in anticipation of a brighter future. Malacca’s actuality forecloses the complex relationships between national and transnational interests, land reclamation, and its unintended side effects. It highlights that the state of sand, and by extension the symbolic, economic, and political meanings attached to it, are ever-shifting. Foregrounded by “failed” reclamation projects, local fishermen gain political agency and mudfish start to flourish. Here, sand can be seen as the substrate for capital, human, and non-human entanglements.

My contribution is based on fieldwork conducted in Malacca, Malaysia in 2020 and analyzes how sand is rendered operational as an economic and political medium. At the same time, I draw attention to its granular physics to show how this perspective creates opportunities for rethinking material transformation beyond extractivism. 
The presentation will feature excerpts from my film work White Elephant (2022). The two-channel video installation explores the relationship between architectural models, promotional digital renders, and the actual sites. Malacca’s deserted coastline stands in for the disjunction between future promises, their material premises, and repercussions. Amidst the ruins, the silty plots of land start to form a life of their own.