Performance Lecture | Ion Drift: Postscripts on the move

Ion Drift: Postscripts on the move is a lecture-performance that looks at geography as philosophical terrain, set largely around the Aegean region in Türkiye and parts of Greece. Based on an interview with philosopher Kojin Karatani, the work takes off from the origins of philosophical thought in Ancient Ionia. It examines how the systems of thought developed in Ionia reveal that freedom of movement and the emergence of the individual are both tied to the recognition of immanent physical laws, as opposed to speculative, transcendental ideas. The lecture-performance drifts along this ancient medley of thought and sensible matter.

Part of the exhibition Unlicensed Goods' public programme, this event is followed on the same day by a salon-style conversation between participating artists Anthea Hamilton, Ruoru Mou and A Sai Ta join Billy Tang, curator of the exhibition. Please book separately via this link to secure a spot.

About Unlicensed Goods

Unlicensed Goods is a major survey exhibition of Asian and Asian diasporic artists exploring the ad hoc networks and shadow economies that accompany the global movements of manufactured goods and migrant communities.

Unlicensed Goods engages with the friction, co-dependence and short circuits between formal and informal systems of production. Through the lens of immigrant experience and resilience, Unlicensed Goods traces overlooked histories and alternative concepts of authorship that continue to shape contemporary art.

Inspired by the proximities and overlaps between underground and mainstream circulations of manufactured objects and stories, Unlicensed Goods surveys practices and initiatives at the intersection of art, design and fashion. The exhibition marks the first major group survey since the opening of YDP. Occupying the entirety of the building with a combination of site-specific commissions, spatial interventions and existing works, the exhibition reflects on the material realities of globalised production. It examines questions of cultural access and exclusion, collaborative and collective forms of production that challenge singular authorship and modes of immigrant survival within environments that remain indifferent to—or actively erase—the visibility of outsiders.

Curated by Billy Tang, Artistic Director at YDP

About the artists

Mochu (b.1983, Kerala) works with video and text, arranged as installations, lectures and publications. Technoscientific fictions and subcultural formations feature prominently in his practice, often modulated with anxiety, futurity and weird selfhoods. Recent projects have explored ideas around neurohistory, deep time, the ruins of cyberpunk, and the conjunction of natural philosophy and political thought.

Mochu is the author of the books Bezoar Delinqxenz (Edith-Russ-Haus + Sternberg Press, 2023), and Nervous Fossils: Syndromes of the Synthetic Nether (Reliable Copy + KNMA, 2022). He is a recipient of fellowships from Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst (2020–22), Ashkal Alwan (2015–16), India Foundation for the Arts (2012–15) and The Sarai Programme (2012).

Exhibitions include those at Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Thailand Biennale Phuket (2025), RMIT Melbourne (2024), 9th Asian Art Biennial (2024), 9th Asia-Pacific Triennial (2018), 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018), 13th Sharjah Biennial (2017) and transmediale:BWPWAP (2013), and a solo show at Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst (2022).

Merve Ertufan (b. 1985, Istanbul) makes installations, videos, sound-arrangements, texts and objects. Her practice engages with what might be called the microphysics of the mind, observing inconsistencies, gaps and dead-ends in language and habit. Speech, written text and gestural detours of the body frequently combine to form game-like relationships, with compulsive paradoxes, stories, questions and riddles informing their play.

Merve’s works have been featured in museums and institutions such as Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2026), Thailand Biennale Phuket (2025), Serendipity Arts Festival (2025), Liquid Architecture (2025), Arter (2013), Tanas (2014), Zilberman Gallery (2022), Bahar, the Istanbul off-site project of Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017), with two solo exhibitions—at at Depo (2020), and Bilsart (2022). She was part of the SAHA Studio program in Istanbul (2023), and a fellow at the Home Workspace Program, Ashkal Alwan in Beirut (2016).