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Chen Zhan

@chen__zhan

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Architect•Artist•Anthropologist•Filmmaker; 1/2 of field-0; CCA-Mellon Fellow @canadiancentreforarchitecture; upcoming @asffestival @kv_leipzig

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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.

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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.

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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! taken in Vajiralongkorn Dam by @chen__zhan

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a year ago

“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. by @chen__zhan

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7 months ago

On the journal a review Steve Bisson introduces "Tracing Sand" by field-0 studio co-founded by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng & Chen Zhan and a relation-oriented practice working across architecture, anthropology, art and film. The portfolio shortlisted call 'Urbanautica Institute Awards 2025', concerns inequalities between human beings. A deeper erasure affects our relationship with other forms of life. Animals, vegetation, aquatic organisms, and biological systems are excluded from any form of negotiation over the fate of the territories they inhabit. They have no voice in the economic accounting that determines the value of a river, a delta, or a field. They become expendable presences, deemed secondary to the demands of the economy and infrastructure.

Read more from link in bio. by @chen__zhan

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a day ago

It feels strangely moving to see Ripple Ripple Rippling finding a second home in Chiang Mai, as part of Monsoon School.

The project foregrounds the grannies in a village on the outskirts of Wuhan — how they gather, build, burn, plant, cook, worship, and live alongside the pinewoods. We have been coming back to this village for more than ten years, and Ripple has grown alongside our relationship with the community. Their lives are also part of a much larger story of China’s floating population: generations leaving for work, while the grannies remain, holding together everyday life and relationships to the land.

Seeing the work here, in a very different but somehow resonant context, feels less like Ripple has travelled somewhere new and more like it has found another place to settle for a while.

Alongside it is Tracing Sand — still very much an ongoing journey following sand, water, energy and infrastructures across Southeast Asia. It feels especially fitting to show this work-in-progress in Chiang Mai, close to the Mekong and to many of the landscapes that keep pulling us back.

On view at deCentral Chiang Mai through 31 December. 🤍

Ripple Ripple Rippling — Spatial cinema of the Ripple film trilogy — Scroll lightbox installation — Situated Imaginaries photography series

Tracing Sand — Photographic field notes

Thank you to the @decentral_official team: @vandoboke, @a.phiraya, @iceantya & @zoembutt taken in Chiang Mai, Thailand by @chen__zhan

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a month ago

In a recent conversation with @zambesmile, we talked about how one never really knows how to close a project, especially one that has carried on for more than a decade. By that point, it has acquired a life of its own, travelling to places we could not have foreseen.

Perhaps what we can do is insist on returning. Returning to the village, and to the grannies who still expect us. Not for a project or a film anymore, but more like going back to see your grandma.

And perhaps not being afraid of remaining in debt to their generosity and care. That debt is also a form of commitment: we know, and they know, that we will come back. Something we talked about with @lirspace @dreamiy during our Monsoon time together in Chiang Mai has stayed with us.

With every return, though, there is a feeling in the gut that someone may no longer be there. Last month, it happened. It had been a beautiful time together.

Returning has become, in this sense, part of Ripple Ripple Rippling: not the continuation of a project, but the continuation of a relationship after the project no longer needs to continue.

Images:
1–2. Family Portrait, 2022
3. Screen-back, 2023
4–5. Returning, 2026
6. Thank you 🙏🏼

All photos by @chen__zhan. taken in Wuhan, China by @chen__zhan

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a month ago

10 days together is a pretty radical proposition. Talking, walking, making, eating, occasionally sleeping — and spending A LOT of time in each other’s company. At Monsoon School, that intensity somehow becomes the whole point.

We still think about that long afternoon, a group conversation stretched on until the daylight disappeared. Everyone opened into something unusually candid, vulnerable and generous — the kind of conversation we’re always craving ourselves.

What stays with us most is the bonding — the serious conversations and the ridiculous ones, shared meals, long walks, tired faces, laughter, and all the small moments through which a group slowly becomes a group. We felt lucky to witness it, and luckier still to become part of it, however briefly.

There’s something wonderfully bold about building a programme around the conviction that spending this much time together matters. It clearly does.

And, selfishly, it feeds straight back into our own ongoing journey — another reason to keep finding our way back to Thailand. 🌧️🤍

@decentral_official super girls: @vandoboke, @a.phiraya, @iceantya & @zoembutt

Our fellow co-facilitators: @exutoire_ @noirrowartspace @lirspace @sher_maker @sisyphusam @phuwakitika

And of course, the formidable Monsoon crew:
@sikarnts, @thamnodrunk, @honeycoffeebaby, @alphaemarfa, @warwhorelian, @passifloraart, @alwanbrilian, @parepatcharapa, @dinhthaolinh, @argue.lang, @yeyintnaing19

Shout out to Monsoon School #2 - Open Call! taken in Chiang Mai, Thailand by @chen__zhan

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2 months ago

Thrilled to screen our short film, TILL ASHES TURN INTO PINES, at @st.moritz_art_film_festival 2026 Edition: If Music. It will be its World Premiere in a film festival context.

Friday 21st August
Venue: The Dracula’s Ghost Riders Club, St. Moritz, Switzerland.
10:30 | Introduction by @stefano_rabolli_pansera
10:55 | Screening
11:05 | Talk with Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, moderated by @zambesmile

As the final part of the RIPPLE RIPPLE RIPPLING film trilogy, this short experimental documentary explores the inarticulacy of deep connections between matter, life forms, and humans.

It centres on elderly women in Shigushan village—often widowed and living alone—who sustain themselves by tending family pinewoods: gathering needles for cooking fuel, trading sap for modest income, or selling trees to local veneer factories. Through these timber products, they remain entwined in the material flows between countryside and city. Yet this forest-based livelihood is increasingly precarious, threatened by accidental fire, snow disasters, and urban expansion.

The film traces the women’s relationship with the pinewoods, foregrounding themes of fragility, reciprocity, reincarnation, and transformation embedded in everyday moments. Embracing ethnographic fragmentation through cinematic juxtaposition, it privileges affective resonance and multiple perspectives over linear narrative.

Co-Directed by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Chen Zhan, and Mengfan Wang
Cinematography by Chen Zhan
Editing by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan
Project supported by @grahamfoundation taken in St. Moritz, Switzerland by @chen__zhan

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2 months ago

What happens when architecture shifts its focus from objects to the systems that produce them?

For Material Cultures @material_cultures and Field-0, architecture cannot be understood in isolation. Through regenerative material practices, long-term fieldwork and journeys tracing sand, water and energy across Southeast Asia, both practices reveal the ecological, social and political systems that shape the built environment.

In conversation under the 2026 @obelfoundation theme Systems’ Hack, Paloma Gormley, Jingru (Cyan) Cheng @cyanjingrucheng and Chen Zhan @chen__zhan discuss how architects can intervene in systems of value, extraction and education, arguing for forms of practice that are embodied, collaborative and grounded in territory.

“It’s not possible to be passive if you want the system to shift. There is scope for intervention at pretty much every stage.”

Read the full conversation via the link in bio. by @chen__zhan

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3 months ago

In recognition of the brilliant photography exhibited at our Photo Salon last May, we will be highlighting a few anthropologists and the work they shared at the event here on social media, starting with Chen Zhan (@chen__zhan). The photographs presented here are part of the long-term project Ripple Ripple Rippling in China, developed by Zhan and collaborators Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, @cyanjingrucheng, and Mengfan Wang, @ladyclaude, with support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, @grahamfoundation.

Swipe to hear from Zhan about the series Family Portrait and view the project online at https://field-0.xyz/ripple-ripple-rippling. Stay tuned for more highlights from the Photo Salon! by @chen__zhan

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3 months ago

ขอแนะนำกระบวนกรร่วมสำหรับกิจกรรม Monsoon School #1: NOIR ROW ART SPACE, LIR และ field-0 [English below]
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ใน Monsoon School #1 กระบวนกรร่วม ได้แก่ NOIR ROW ART SPACE, LIR และ field-0 จะนำเสนอโครงการระยะยาวและวิธีวิทยาการทำงานที่ยึดโยงกับพื้นที่เฉพาะ พวกเขาจะแบ่งปันแนวทางสร้างสรรค์ในการปฏิบัติ (Practice) ที่พัฒนาขึ้นจากการทำงานร่วมกับพื้นที่และบริบทเฉพาะอย่างต่อเนื่อง ผ่านการนำเสนอวัสดุของโครงการ เอกสารบันทึก อาร์ไคฟ์ และกิจกรรมเวิร์กช็อปที่พวกเขาเป็นผู้ดำเนินกระบวนการ พร้อมทั้งเสนอข้อมูลเชิงลึกเกี่ยวกับวิธีการที่ผลงานของพวกเขาตอบสนองต่อสภาพทางการเมือง นิเวศวิทยา และประวัติศาสตร์ที่แตกต่างกัน

Monsoon School คือห้องปฏิบัติการเชิงทดลองสำหรับการปฏิบัติงานเชิงพื้นที่ ซึ่งครอบคลุมแนวทางปฏิบัติด้านศิลปะ ภัณฑารักษ์ สถาปัตยกรรม และการวิจัยที่เกี่ยวข้องกับเงื่อนไขทางสังคม การเมือง นิเวศวิทยา สถานะทางวัตถุของพื้นที่และสถานที่ ผู้ที่สนใจเข้าร่วมโครงการ ‘Monsoon School #1 – Site as Method’ ต้องส่งใบสมัครเพื่อเข้าร่วมโครงการแบบเต็มระยะเวลา (ปิดรับสมัคร: 8 กรกฎาคม 2569)

กิจกรรมต่าง ๆ ใน ‘Monsoon School #1’ จะเปิดให้บุคคลทั่วไปเข้าชมได้ (แบบจำกัดจำนวนผู้เข้าชม) ในรูปแบบโอเพ่นสตูดิโอ (Open Studios) ผลงานต่าง ๆ จะถูกจัดแสดงตลอดกิจกรรมในฐานะแหล่งเรียนรู้ เพื่อให้ผู้เข้าชมได้เรียนรู้ แลกเปลี่ยน และไตร่ตรองร่วมกัน
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Monsoon School #1 - Site as Method เปิดรับสมัครผู้เข้าร่วมแล้ว!
[หมดเขตรับสมัคร: 8 กรกฎาคม 2569]
ระยะเวลาดำเนินกิจกรรม: 14 - 23 สิงหาคม 2569 (ระยะเวลากิจกรรมรวม 10 วัน)
สถานที่: deCentral เชียงใหม่ และ Sher Maker Studio เชียงใหม่ ประเทศไทย
ศึกษาเพิ่มเติมได้ที่ decentralth.com (ลิงก์ในไบโอ) by @chen__zhan

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4 months ago

An Open Call! Monsoon School # 1 - Site as Method [English below]
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Monsoon School (โรงเรียนมรสุม) สำรวจว่าผู้ปฏิบัติงาน (ครอบคลุมทั้งศิลปิน ภัณฑารักษ์ สถาปนิก ผู้ทำงานด้านวัฒนธรรม และผู้ทำงานในสาขาอื่น ๆ) ตอบสนองต่อพื้นที่เฉพาะ (Specific Sites) ในฐานะวิธีการสร้างสรรค์ การมีส่วนร่วม และการอำนวยความสะดวกในการผลิตผลงานศิลปะอย่างไร ”พื้นที่“ ในที่นี้อาจมีหลายขนาด หลายรูปแบบ ตั้งแต่ชุมชนที่ก่อตัวขึ้นเฉพาะกิจ หรือพื้นที่เฉพาะแห่ง ไปจนถึงเงื่อนไขทางภูมิศาสตร์ นิเวศวิทยา ประวัติศาสตร์ หรือสังคมในวงกว้าง ที่ครอบคลุม “สถานที่” และ “พื้นที่” หลากหลายรูปแบบ
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Monsoon School #1 เปิดรับผู้เข้าร่วมโครงการ 10 คน จากประเทศไทยและทั่วภูมิภาคเอเชียตะวันออกเฉียงใต้ มาเข้าร่วมกิจกรรมที่จัดขึ้นเพื่อศึกษาว่าพื้นที่ถูกสร้างขึ้นทางสังคมอย่างไร และสำรวจพื้นที่ในฐานะภาพสะท้อนถึงการตั้งอยู่ของตัวมันเอง ความเป็นอัตวิสัย และรูปแบบการปฏิบัติร่วมกัน
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หากคุณสนใจในกระบวนการศึกษาและระเบียบวิธีเชิงพื้นที่ กรุณาสมัครมาร่วมโครงการกับเรา! เยี่ยมชมเว็บไซต์ของเราสำหรับรายละเอียดเพิ่มเติมเกี่ยวกับวิธีการสมัคร! (ลิงก์ในไบโอ)

#deCentral #PracticeRespondSupport #MonsoonSchool by @chen__zhan

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4 months ago

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.

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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 🔗

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#sandmining #urbandevelopment #southeastasia #builtenvironment #photofeature taken in Singapore by @chen__zhan

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6 months ago