Black Atlantis: The Plantationocene

(image: video still used in lecture-performance)

Using video and sound recorded on my IPhone during residencies in Barbados and Trinidad, this lecture performance asks: what is the relationship between climate change and plantation economies, and how might we begin to think of a watery plantationocene? It revolves around two islands: a former plantation in St George’s Parish in Barbados, and the port city of Port of Spain in Trinidad: visiting the heartland of one of the three stops of the transatlantic slave trade, and taking seriously Donna Haraway’s and Anna Tsing’s use of the term ‘plantationocene’ which connects the development of a plantation form of production to the beginning of the current geological era that we are in.

Link to performance: https://dutchartinstitute.eu/page/11755/2017-sunday-april-23-roaming-assembly-13-the-navigation-principle-black

Performed at
▪ Alice Yard, Trinidad (2016)
▪ Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem (2017)
▪ The Contemporary Contemporary, Aarhus (2017)
▪ Historical Materialism, Beirut (2017)
▪ Techno Futures and Black Resistance, Goldsmiths (2017)
• Agropoetics, SAVVY Contemporary Ben Aissi Morocco (2019)