Fluid Coexistence is the first episode of Season Two of Storefront: Broadcasts. It traces the swamp as a site where something can both belong and not belong, as a space of possibility and impossibility, where multiple ideas, forms, and ways of life can exist in harmony and disharmony all at once.

This season, each episode is anchored around a specific idea or provocation that is inspired by essays or projects that we’ll unpack or expand upon through conversations and research. Fluid Coexistence is grounded in the essay “Sensing Grounds: Mangroves Unauthentic, Belonging, Extra-Territoriality” by curators Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl, published in 2013 at e-flux.

Participants in this episode include: Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl reading passages of their essay that will thread together the other segments throughout the episode. Environmental scientist Gonzalo Carrasco and architect Feifei Zhou discuss their project “Before There Was Land, There Were Mangroves”, commissioned for the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale. The project involves a series of mapping analyses examining Singapore’s history of land reclamation and the chemical impacts of recent industrial and urban transformations along the Southern coastline. Anthropologist Marcus Barber talks to Waka Mununggurr, the chairperson of the Djalkiripuyngu Aboriginal Corporation, about Indigenous relationships to land and sea. Tejah Shah reads five poems that were written by Minal Hajratwala, commissioned for Shah’s project Between the Waves. Chris Cyrille-Isaac tells a story he wrote called The Crab and the Aparahiwa in French for his exhibition “But the world is a mangrovity.” An English translation of The Crab and the Aparahiwa can be read here. Collaged in between are audio clips from soundscapes, interviews and films by Nicole L’Huillier, Thao Nguyen Phan and Barbara London, Sónia Vaz Borges and Filipa César, and Magnetic Ideals.

SOUND & VIDEO CREDITS
L’Huillier, Nicole (2018). Amphibian Songs [Audio Files]
Amphibian Songs was originally composed for Futurity Island, a project by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, designed in collaboration with Indrė Umbrasaitė, that is an infrastructure for interspecies communication and an open space for learning. 

Borges, Sónia Vaz & César Filipa (Directors). (2022) Mangrove School [Film, excerpt]

LOOP Barcelona (2020) Becoming Alluvium Thao Nguyen Phan in conversation with Barbara London [Film, excerpt]

Shah, Tejal (2012) Between the Waves [Audio Files]

Lumm, Kirsty and McKnight, Heather (2023) The Swamp: Ritualising our Biodiversity as a Utopian Somatic Practice [Film]

Swamplands: Broadcasts | Fluid Coexistence

Don't Lick The Back Of The Natterjack Toad
Copyright 2025 Cooper Jones

Down there in the wetlands
Where wise folk never go
Lurk some nasty critters
And I’m here to tell you so
 
Found myself there one day
A-payin’ for my sins
So naïve and clueless
‘Bout all that bites and stings
 
‘Cos the only thing I ever knowed
Was don’t lick the back of the natterjack toad
 
The copperhead, the cobra
The canebrake rattlesnake
The viper and the python
Gonna make your body shake
 
That ol’ brown recluse spider
And scorpion in cahoots
Enjoy seein’ a stranger
A-quakin’ in his boots
 
And the only thing I ever knowed
Was don’t lick the back of the natterjack toad
 
Then there’s the snappin’ turtle
With that cold devilish smile
Don’t cross an alligator
Or offend a crocodile
 
But worse than any predator
In the swamp where marsh reeds grow
Because they’re goddam everywhere
Is the varmint mosquito
 
And the only thing I ever knowed
Was don’t lick the back of the natterjack toad
  

Don't Lick The Back Of The Natterjack Toad

Baldwin's Abyss

Multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Georgiana has been performing and making music since the age of 5. She grew up in an American Army family, moving house and countries throughout her childhood and is a dual national USA/UK.

Storefront for Art and Architecture amplifies the understanding of the built environment through artistic practice. Founded in 1982 by artists and architects in downtown New York, Storefront has chronicled the changing urban landscape of the city over the years, and remains committed to producing and presenting work about diverse notions of place and public life.

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