Project description
Visual archaeology of the plantation and its colonial afterlives
Rooted in colonial capitalism, the plantation system continues to shape how landscapes, labour, and nature are governed and contribute to today’s climate and ecological crises. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the V-ARCH project is developing a method of visual archaeology that works through images rather than only analysing them. It will use this approach to study the plantation in the Luso-Afro-Brazilian world. Drawing on archival research, museum collections, and sensory ethnography in plantation landscapes in Brazil and Portugal, the project will create a digital atlas that traces plantation histories and their contemporary manifestations while integrating Indigenous epistemologies and artistic practices. Overall, V-ARCH is supporting broader efforts towards landscape restoration.
Objective
To what extend and in what ways the Plantation regime survives and how to visualize it without reproducing its effects? V-ARCH answers this question by examining the plantation in the Luso-Afro-Brazilian world as a palimpsestic visual object that endures, while advancing a novel mode of inquiry produced through images rather than just on images – visual archaeology. As capitalist racialized nature, the plantation is responsible for the naturalisation and universalisation of colonial ways of inhabiting, knowing, and imagining landscapes that are at the root of the present climate crisis. As its effects become increasingly impossible to ignore, V-ARCH puts forward a thinking visually to re-historicise the plantation, visualise its afterlives, and reexamine hegemonic ways of relating to the land.
Drawing on research in archives and museums and executing a sensory ethnography on plantationscapes in Brazil and Portugal, the methodology entails the assemblage of an open-source digital atlas to track the plantation’s routes. By juxtaposing visual representations of the plantation and its present afterlives, while also mobilising post-plantation ecologies, including Indigenous epistemologies and artistic practices, V-ARCH posits that a visual rereading of the past-present can counter the plantation as an encompassing model for the regulation of life.
In terms of scientific and social impact, V-ARCH: 1) fills an epistemological gap by bringing to light the neglected Portuguese case-study within on-going international debates; 2) adds to a growing practice-based scholarship by advancing a visual methodology, while contributing to the fields of decolonial studies and ecocritical visual culture; 3) and partakes in the movement for reparations of landscapes by aligning with the UN’s 17 Sustainable Goals and EU’s new Nature Restoration Law.
V-ARCH takes place at NOVA University of Lisbon, Federal University of Bahia, MNAC-Chiado Museum, and Center for Creative Ecologies (UCSC).
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy epistemology
- social sciences media and communications graphic design
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology
- humanities history and archaeology archaeology
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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1099-085 Lisboa
Portugal
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