Chen Zhan

We are launching a Water Campaign: appealing for donations to install a rainwater collection and filtration system for indigenous children in Thailand’s Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir. We aim to build it before the next rainy season — by April 2026. ———— Detailed info: Field-0 is collaborating with the Karen indigenous community living in the Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir, whose ancestral forest lands were submerged following the dam’s construction in the 1980s. Today, many displaced villagers live on floating rafts above their flooded homes, their lives rising and falling with the dam’s cyclical water releases. Though surrounded by water, they remain without access to safe drinking water.   Together with PuPla Kaewprasert, we are working with the Pilok Pho Village Nursery to design and install a rainwater collection and filtration system. This system will provide safe drinking water for the children and serve as a communal resource for the wider village. This process is mediated by the Forest Tradition temple, a well-respected local guardian. ———— We launched this water campaign via the Singapore Biennale, appealing for support from the Singaporean public as participants of Southeast Asia’s transnational power grid and therefore connected to the Karen community in Thailand. A big thank you to @sgbiennale and @duncanny_valley for supporting this campaign. To learn more about the project, scan the QR code or visit the link in bio. If you know ways to support this effort, please do get in touch!

Massive piles of sand quietly sit behind high fences, dredged and imported from afar. Once sand quarries, Singapore’s Tampines district now holds grains of promise: the raw marrow of the built environment that feeds the city-state’s ongoing land reclamation and public housing projects. Here, prosperity and national security reside not yet in towers, but quietly in the earth itself. Chen Zhan (@chen__zhan ) is an artist, independent filmmaker, anthropologist, and UK-registered architect. She is the co-founder of ‘field-0’, a collaborative practice that trials situated, sensorial approaches to dissecting planetary interconnectedness. Since 2023, Chen has been on a pilgrimage journey in Southeast Asia, following sand and water along the Mekong River Basin, seeking to reconnect with the fundamental elements of the built environment. — The built environment encompasses systems of buildings, roads, public infrastructure and utilities shaped through constant interaction with the natural ecosystems that surround and sustain them: rivers, forests, soils and climate. We invited Icarus Complex readers and contributors to participate in a shared experiment that asks a simple but revealing question: how do they experience climate as it interacts with the built environment through its designs, failures and adaptations? As part of the Built Environment series, conversations, photo essays, reportage and immersive features explore how the built environment relates to and is reshaped by the systems underpinning climate change. Curated by Rupal Rathore. View all selected photographs via the link in bio 🔗 — #sandmining #urbandevelopment #southeastasia #builtenvironment #photofeature

“Hydroelectric Spectre” engages invisibility to render perceptible the vast yet obscured infrastructures that sustain contemporary life. For one night, from sunset to sunrise, field-0 [Jingru (Cyan) Cheng & Chen Zhan] transforms the open rooftop of Bangkok Kunsthalle into a sonic portal connected to the power grid linking the Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir. The installation resonates with a corresponding sound bar presented in Singapore as part of the Singapore Biennale. Together, these works trace Southeast Asia’s emerging transnational power grid connecting Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, situating sound as a medium through which territorial and energetic entanglements become perceptible. At the core of this project is the Water Campaign initiated by field-0 with the Karen Indigenous community living within the Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir. The campaign raises funds to design and install a rainwater harvesting and filtration system providing clean drinking water for the Pilok Pho Village Nursery. To learn more about the project or to support the Water Campaign, please visit: field-0.xyz/reservoir-project Video by Krittawat Atthasis and co-edited by Chen Zhan.

Last Friday night, March 6, this rooftop became one node in a vast and largely invisible network, connected by wire and current to the Vajiralongkorn Dam, and onward through Southeast Asia's emerging transnational power grid. Through the aluminium bar humming with live electricity, and sine waves that moved through the body as much as through the air, Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan of field-0 rendered the invisible perceptible and even interactable. Sound and electricity overlapped into something you could feel. Through the four-channel composition, we, at the receiving end of this vast power infrastructure, were invited to imagine its other end: the reservoir, the water, and the Karen communities whose daily lives take place on rafts above their submerged ancestral lands. Throughout the night, people arrived, settled in, and gave the work their time and their bodies. Some lay on mats and let the frequencies pass through them. Others sat, eyes closed, and simply listened. The installation unfolded following the rhythms of the moon and the sun, and people stayed with it until the sky began to lighten. Thank you to everyone who came and stayed with the work Photography by Chen Zhan & Puttisin Choojenroom.

For one night only, field-0 transforms the rooftop of Bangkok Kunsthalle into a sonic portal connected to the power grid linking the Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir in western Thailand to Bangkok, and onward to Singapore, from Friday, 6 March after sunset (8pm) to sunrise (7am) the next day. At the centre of the installation, a raw aluminium bar emits live sound generated directly from Bangkok’s electrical current. A four-channel sonic composition reconstructs life in the floating raft communities of the Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir, rising and falling with the dam’s cyclical water releases above submerged ancestral Karen Indigenous lands. At intervals, sine waves tuned to the site wash through the space, reconfiguring it through resonance that cannot be seen, only felt. Come lie on a mat beneath the open sky, listen, and let your body become a sensing instrument. The installation is developed in connection with an ongoing Water Campaign supporting clean drinking water access for the Pilok Pho Village Nursery part of the Karen communities living inside the reservoir, Thong Pha Phum district, Kanchanaburi. The installation is presented alongside a corresponding sound bar at the Singapore Biennale. Together, they trace Southeast Asia’s emerging transnational power grid connecting Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. We hope to see you on the rooftop.

A running tap in the nursery! We are very excited to share this small milestone from our Water Campaign in Thailand, supporting indigenous children living within the Vajiralongkorn Dam reservoir to access clean drinking water. Thanks to £900 raised by January 2026, we are able to fit a 1,000-litre stainless-steel water tank, a water filtration unit, a pump, and a new gutter section in place at the Pilok Pho Village Nursery, just in time for the coming rainy season in April. This progress has only been possible because of the extraordinary generosity and collaboration of the local community. We are deeply grateful to our Thai collaborators @puplatrikaewprasert , the abbot of the floating temple in the reservoir, and the villagers themselves, who have helped source, transport, and install the system. This project is not just infrastructure—it is a shared effort rooted in trust, care, and mutual support. What’s Next 🌧️⚡️🌧️ We aim to fully upgrade the nursery’s rainwater harvesting and filtration system, hopefully in 2027, creating a reliable and sustainable source of clean water for years to come. To support the continuous development of this project, you can donate via link in the bio or through our webpage: https://field-0.xyz/reservoir-project —————— A big thank you to @sgbiennale and @duncanny_valley for supporting our Water Campaign launched via the Singapore Biennal 2025: Pure Intention, as well as @canadiancentreforarchitecture @rafico.ruiz @boragio @paulmelloncentr @pocoeco @nzingabm @leren.li @zambesmile @tontita00 @thandiloewenson @elisehunchuck @xrwang88 @shawnhycshawn @straits_times @seleneysh @theartnewspaper.official @eva_franch for lending us platforms to spread the words!

Following Drifting Bodies 🌊⚡ field-0 on water, infrastructure & pure intention In our latest IN CONVERSATION, we speak with field-0 (Jingru (Cyan) Cheng & Chen Zhan) about Drifting Bodies (2025)—their four-channel video and sound installation at Singapore Biennale 2025: Pure Intention. From the iconic Rain Vortex at Jewel Changi Airport to Thailand’s Vajiralongkorn Reservoir, field-0 traces how water, energy, labour, and displacement flow across Southeast Asia—linking spectacular images of progress to hidden infrastructures and lived consequences. Grounded in long-term fieldwork and sensorial methods, the work asks us to look beyond surface beauty and attend to what sustains (and costs) contemporary life. The artists also share their Water Campaign, inviting tangible acts of care beyond the exhibition—connecting Singapore to displaced Karen communities in Thailand. 📍 Singapore Biennale 2025: Pure Intention 🗓 On view until 29 March 2026 🏛 Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Tanjong Pagar Distripark Read the full conversation link in bio and CNTRFLD.ART. Credit Drifting Bodies’, Four-channel video installation (2025), as part of the Singapore Biennale 2025 by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan, courtesy of the artists #SingaporeBiennale2025 #Field0 #ContemporaryArtAsia #ArtAndInfrastructure #CNTRFLDART

First time at an art fair—not unlike fieldwork. At the entrance, a guide hands us a special report by The Art Newspaper (@theartnewspaper.official ). To our surprise, there it is: our work Drifting Bodies on the cover, featured as part of the current Singapore Biennale (@sgbiennale ). @sgartweek @art.sg ————— Drifting Bodies (2025) On view at Singapore Biennale through 29 March 2026. Location: 03-06, Blenheim Court, Wessex Estate, 5 Westbourne Road Pure Intention @sgbiennale  2025 Curated by @duncanny_valley  #hsufangtze @seleneysh  @ong.khim —————— Originally commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture @storefrontnyc @jessicaskwok @ruizdeteresa @josesparza Sound design in collaboration with @mewithoutnara Research supported by the Harvard GSD’s 2023 Wheelwright Prize @harvardgsd  and the Canadian Centre for Architecture @canadiancentreforarchitecture .

Practice playing with electricity. ⚡️ A sound instrument that taps into the exhibition site’s electrical flow, channeling it through a live audio feedback system to make sound—echoing the hum of high-voltage transmission lines. In New York (110V), it was calm and cooperative. In Singapore (220–240V), it took some effort to tune the instrument—or maybe it was the site itself. We were advised to offer candies at night then it all worked out (!). Now, after a few months of the Biennale, the instrument seems more attuned to its environment—settled, responsive, and happily playing along. If you’re visiting our space in Singapore, do have a go. Just be gentle. ————— The Humming of the Power Grid (2025) On view at Singapore Biennale through 29 March 2026. Location: 03-06, Blenheim Court, Wessex Estate, 5 Westbourne Road Pure Intention @sgbiennale  2025 Curated by @duncanny_valley  #hsufangtze @seleneysh  @ong.khim Video by @chen__zhan —————— Originally commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture @storefrontnyc @jessicaskwok @ruizdeteresa @josesparza Sound design in collaboration with @mewithoutnara Research supported by the Harvard GSD’s 2023 Wheelwright Prize @harvardgsd  and the Canadian Centre for Architecture @canadiancentreforarchitecture .

2025 in glance: two exhibitions, three publication contributions, four interviews, five film screenings, six talk events, and finally find a name for my collaborative practice — ‘在野 field-0’, with @cyanjingrucheng After countless trips spanning between 3 continents from London to New York, Boston, Venice, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and China, I’m spending my last day of the year on the high speed train heading back home. Thanks everyone who shared a moment with us in this incredible year. Wishing to have a slower pace in 2026 with more time to write and reflect. Happy new year to all!

We are hosting an event this Saturday with London Culture Salon to share our ongoing project ‘Tracing Sand’. Join us if you are in London! Registration link in the bio. Since 2023, we have embarked on a pilgrimage as recovering architects, following sand and water along the Mekong River Basin in Southeast Asia, seeking to reconnect with the fundamental elements of our surroundings—the concrete foundations, the lime mortar on the walls, the window glass—all made from sand and derived from rivers and land in one form or another. During the event, we will share our fieldwork encounters and the latest developments in Thailand’s Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir, where we hope to help the indigenous children build a rainwater harvesting and filtration system for clean drinking water. All welcome! However, please note that this event will be mainly in Chinese. Thanks @leren.li for the warm invitation and London Chan Meditation for offering the venue! Time: 14-16:30, Dec.6, 2025 Location: 9 Printing House Yard E2 7PR Direction: Please first head to Waterson Street to find the gate leading to Printing House Yard (Google coordinates: 51.528586, -0.076832). If no one is at the gate to open the door for you, please call the number on the gate and let them know you are here to attend an event at 9 Printing House Yard. Once you enter the gate, walk straight down the slope through the yard until you reach the very end, then turn right. The door is next to the No. 9 sign in orange on the wall.

In the Hurricane, On the Land: Forms of Return A joint talk to explore what practices of return and reciprocity come to the foreground when undertaking research with land-based communities. Together with Rafico Ruiz (@rafico.ruiz ), Associate Director of Research, Canadian Centre for Architecture (@canadiancentreforarchitecture ); hosted by Paul Mellon Centre (@paulmelloncentr ). Starting from the end of 2023, we have been following sand and water across the Mekong River Basin, from the Tibetan Plateau in China through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and outward—via resource extraction—to Singapore. Our current phase is to return the work to its contexts, especially Singapore, Bangkok, and the dam reservoir in Thailand. We think of this as a multi-part territorial statement, mobilising exhibitions and community acts to reveal the hidden infrastructural and elemental connections shaping contemporary life. Of particular importance is the Water Campaign to build a rainwater collection and filtration system for the indigenous Karen people, a community living on raft houses above the submerged forests in the Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir in Thailand, whose lives rise and fall with the dam’s cyclical water releases. ——— 7 November 2025 1:00 – 2:30 pm Paul Mellon Centre, 16 Bedford Square, London Register link in bio. ——— Image 1-4: Life inside Thailand’s Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir Image 5: Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project, installation view at Singapore Biennale 2025 Credits: Chen Zhan & Jingru (Cyan) Cheng