Muhannad Shono

A Forgotten Place carries water condensate from air conditioning (AC) units inside warehouses on either side of the laneway to irrigate a garden of feral plants. It is a microcosm of the inadvertent and varied plant-life that grow largely unnoticed around Al Quoz, fed by unintended lifelines of condensate drip.

It draws attention to what Muhannad Shono calls “AC ecologies” representing nature’s resiliency and adaptation to anthropocentric climate change. The project sets out to think with AC ecologies, to consider the potential of an abundant yet untapped irrigation source that can be found in water-scarce parts of the world.

This Global Co-Commission, titled A Feral Commons, curated by Tairone Bastien, is an initiative by Alserkal Advisory in collaboration with GCDN (Global Cultural Districts Network) and supported by UAP. The commission spans three cultural districts across three continents: Alserkal Avenue, Dubai (UAE), Victoria Yards, Johannesburg (South Africa), and Kingston Creative, Kingston (Jamaica).

In developing an initiative focused on contextualising the global climate crisis and driving collective action, the Global Co-commission has used our proprietary tools to help measure the impact of public art. This includes providing a framework to audit the project’s CO2 emissions and tracking and reporting on the societal impact and afterlife of the three commissions in each of the participating districts.