An encounter with sterculia cordata

An instance of playful regenerative placemaking

It started as with a fascination with the genetic diversity of sterculia cordata fruit halves, and how their shape and colour evolved as they dried, the plump velvety roundness contorting into different shapes as moisture left the structure. This was inspired by artist-scientist Isabelle Desjeux’s Hevealogy project, which documented the exploded shells of rubber seed pods. The work is about the inquiry process, giving yourself the permission to ask questions and act on them.

So naturally, my curiosity doesn’t stop at observing, there is a compulsion to play, to experiment, to touch and to transform.

On my daily walks around the neighbourhood in Bayshore, in the Eastern coastal part of Singapore, I had been picking up anything that draws my attention. Like a child, I picked up leaves, branches, dried fruit, and an abundance of my chosen material for this residency - sterculia cordata fruit halves.

Sterculia cordata or Kelumpang is a native tree of Singapore. Leaves are egg to spoon or broadly elliptic leaves with a heart-shaped base, dense star-like hairs are found on the underside. Drooping clusters of bell-shaped, 5-lobed flowers, pink, reddish to orange coloured with a dark red centre found at the tip of the branches. The fruit is a red, woody follicle that spilt upon maturity revealing its elliptic dark seeds.

A pile of sterculia cordata fruit shell halves from a first forage

the sterculia cordata fruit halves at various stages of dehydration, each one performing an extremely slow Butoh dance. The variation is beautiful.

Over the last year or so as I have been moving around a lot within Singapore, and in the world, I have developed this practice of getting to know my environment through engaging with the natural environment and looking for opportunities for play. Each new environment has its own character, and as I get to know it through my own process of play, an altar representing the material manifestation of its character emerges.

Part of my altar, the sterculia shell holds my jewelry, a jade pendant from my grandmother, a brass ring made from a bullet shell from Siem Reap, and a brass labyrinth ring bought from an artist in the Philippines

another altar that resulted from my stay at the West Coast of Singapore.

I run my fingers over the grooves, feel the waxy waterproof surface. In another time I could be a mystic, reading these lines for some wisdom that the unseen forces are trying to communicate to us. Watching these shells dry out and evolve is the opposite watching a plant grow, though the feeling of observing change might be similar. With growth, there’s an anticipation of a release; these fruit have already released their seeds in an explosive event, and my intervention through collecting the halves has disrupted their subsequent decomposition into fertiliser under the tree. Inherent in growth is a peak and breakdown. Only modern economics tries to sustain growth forever.

The freshly split fruit halves are plump with moisture. The shape of the shell changes as it continues drying and losing moisture - a living sculpture

I try to preserve these shells, slow down their decomposition. I embrace the shrivelling, though I dread the disintegration. For now it seems they will stay as they are. I could bring them with me in my suitcase to Sweden, where the dry air will preserve them and hasten my own skin’s deterioration. It’s like I am exchanging my own time for theirs. Why am I trying to buy time in this way anyway? Do I like the whole process or playing with the boundaries of the game, feeling like I have some semblance of control over the inevitable? That I enjoyed the path towards this universal law of entropy: when left alone in natural states, eventually everything goes into disorder, i.e. decomposition of the order that nature created in the formation of a fruit, for example.

how to find your other half when you’re both bent out of shape?

finding new ways to fit together, since we don’t fit together as we used to…and you might not be from the same fruit I split from!

aha! spooning always works

What else can I do with the shells? Perhaps I could use them as divination runes?

I could play a game of organic Jenga or make a zen sculpture with the halves

Or string them all together into a percussive instrument. Here I used bamboo fibre cord which I found in my pocket, a souvenir from the bamboo rafting trip in Chiang Mai. I poked holes with a needle (I always have a small sewing kit when I travel) and enlarged the holes with a sharpened pencil. Though it would be so much easier if you had a drill.

It is a great luxury to be able to slow down and play like this, and I am ever grateful. What I love even more than playing by myself, is playing with others. Experimenting with materials with other curious folks is quite blissful to me. So please reach out if you would like to explore this sort of playing too. I have also found my way into my own practices through roads carved by others - like Ferry, See Yee, and Chloe - where I was allowed to join them for a bit of their journey.

As I continue this nomadic life, I hold on ever more dearly to the practices that ground me, enliven me, and connect me to this Earth and to the people who care about her.