The Sea That Remembers: Labour, Technology, and Afro-Asian Exchange

Friday 20 February 2026, 6 pm
The Sea That Remembers: Labour, Technology, and Afro-Asian Exchange

The Sea That Remembers brings together history, image-making, and contemporary geopolitics to examine the long afterlives of indentured labour across the Indian Ocean world. In this talk, visual artist and researcher Musquiqui Chihying traces the routes of the coolie trade that connected Asia and Africa through islands, ports, and maritime infrastructures. Rather than approaching the ocean as a neutral space of circulation, the research understands it as a haunted archive—one shaped by extraction, displacement, and unequal technological exchange. Drawing on archival materials, moving images, sound, and field research, the talk explores how technologies such as the camera, maritime logistics, and contemporary smart-city infrastructures have participated in producing and governing labouring bodies. From colonial-era image regimes to present-day Chinese-led technological projects across the Global South, these systems continue to shape how labour, territory, and visibility are organised. By foregrounding islands as critical sites of transit and control, The Sea That Remembers invites us to rethink the Indian Ocean as a space where histories of labour, technology, and image politics remain deeply entangled. 

Free admission.