Fergus Wiltshire

WaterWays: an invitation to re-imagine the ecology of Regent’s Canal restores and regenerates broken relationships between humans and the living organisms of the Regent’s Canal.

The project explores the canal’s biodiversity and lived histories to understand and challenge the way we generate, collect and store environmental data. At the core of the project is Canal Observatory, a commission by the artist collectives AusBlau and Applied Logic that have co-created a digital game for environmental data collection. By looking at the biodiversity of Camley Street Natural Park and recognising it through “canal emojis”, Canal Observatory reflects on who can collect data, how this is accessible as well as how we can reimagine our relationships with our surroundings.

Behind the scenes, WaterWays creates an ecosystem of alliances recognising agency to those who have been working with water and data for much longer than the curatorial team; the project involves scientists and botanists, Central Saint Martins students working on projects to protect the ecosystem, local inhabitants closely linked to the aquatic environment, as well as artists and creative practitioners.

WaterWays: an invitation to re-imagine the ecology of the Regent’s Canal was curated by Chiara Famengo, Fergus Wiltshire, Jiaqi Liu, Kylee Kim, Marjorier Ding, Yixiong Cui from the MA Curating Contemporary Art Programme as part of the Graduate Projects 2022, Royal College of Art in partnership with the Open Data Institute (ODI)’s Data as Culture.

Ferg Wiltshire is an independent curator and researcher based in London interested in the intersection between art and social discourse. His practice focuses on the role of art in contemporary society exploring how through a circular curatorial practice the arts can be used as a tool to build relationships and foster change.

In his graduate dissertation, ‘Why return to the white cube?’, Wiltshire examines how the museological white cube more often acts as a hierarchical structure instead of a place for public expression and discourse. Tracing a number of practices in and outside of the white cube Wiltshire envisions how these spaces might still be of value within contemporary culture, establishing the notion of museological white cube as a heterotopia. Through this lens Wiltshire argues that these spaces offer a unique characteristic that allows them to pose the most menial of actions as social and utopian questions. Concluding that although currently the museological white cube and those practices that engage with communities more often exist separate from each other, there is a place for coexistence where the heterotopic framing of the white cube compliments and fuses with the considered dialectical approach of site-specific driven practices, culminating in a museological white cube that is of and for its public.

For his Graduate Project, WaterWays: an invitation to reimagine the ecology of the Regent’s Canal, Ferg along with five other curators invited artists, students, and citizen scientists to re-imagine the ecology of the Regent's Canal challenging the way we generate, collect and store environmental data. Culminating in a new platform for radical learning and collective making, both online and at Camley Street Natural Park.

Canal Assembly 1, Camley Street Natural Park

Launch Project

Canal Assembly 1, Camley Street Natural Park – A workshop with CSM BA1 Architecture students in which we explored possible futures for park.

Canal Assembly 2, Camley Street Natural Park

Launch Project

Canal Assembly 2, Camley Street Natural Park – A workshop with CSM BA1 Architecture students that investigated the biodiversity of the park using quadrants.

Launch Project

Canal Assembly 2, Camley Street Natural Park – CSM BA1 Architecture students discuss their finding during the second workshop and reflect on what influence this has to their practice.

Canal Observatory, AusBlau in production with Applied Logic

Launch Project

Canal Observatory, AusBlau in production with Applied Logic – Canal Observatory is a gamified tool for data collection at Camley Street Natural Park.

Michael Smythe interview for Voices of Water

Launch Project

Michael Smythe interview for Voices of Water – This chapter allows people to hear the voices of those who have been working with water and data for much longer than WaterWays. The testimonies collected here come from a broad range of fields: scientists, academics, local inhabitants, students, and ecologists.

WaterWays is an art project that connects humans to other living organisms of the Regent’s Canal. Through Canal Observatory, a newly commissioned digital game for data collection codesigned by artist collectives AusBlau and Applied Logic, interviews, stories, ecological findings. WaterWays seeks to understand the health of this ecosystem in the hope of remedying and rebuilding relationships. The research is presented in the form of three chapters: Voices of Water; (Un)learning Canal Ecosystems; and Archiving Futures.

Installation View: Hongrui Liu at safehouse 1

Installation View: Wenxuan Wang at safehouse 1

Speaking to someone is two monologues in one dialogue. Some inevitable invasion of one’s territory occurs when a seemingly fair reciprocity delivers to both ends; some selfishness is exchanged when messages are internalised. The absence of a real audience does not satisfy our appetite for understanding. But rather, we still perform speaking as if all violence is hidden beneath.

“I” is a symbolic character that internalises and owns everything “I” experiences.

A story that’s told by “I” is the META-narrative that governs “I”’s ego.

“They” only become othered when “I” starts speaking to them,

for this is “i”’s psychotic imagination of someone invading a territory that belongs to “I” only.

As the self-centred “I” presents the story to us, “I” become the centre again.

But “I” does not know.

I spoke to them at safehouse 1 is a group show exhibiting seven artists of various disciplines. It invites guests to connect to artworks in a domestic space - a space that beholds intimate and unforgettable moments, that shelters violence and secrets and which extends into the deepest end of artificial realities.

Exhibiting artists:

Lidan Yang, Thomas Moen, Yimin Xiang, Hongrui Liu, Ollie Ma, Wenxuan Wang, Margaret Liang

Curators:

Ferg Wiltshire & Harriet Zhang

Installation View: With Nature and a Camera, Royal Geographical Society

With Nature and a Camera was presented in the Royal Geographical Society’s Pavilion, on Exhibition Road. The exhibition featured 36 photographs and footage by the pioneering wildlife photographer Cherry Kearton. The exhibition was conceived to celebrate the career of an ecological and photographic change maker and to raise funds for the charity Fauna & Flora International (FFI).

Fergus Wiltshire

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Royal College of Art