Sonic Faction, 253–262

Chapter

A Tidalectic Atlas of the Plantationocene

EXCERPT

The script below (in caps) is an excerpt from Black Atlantis: The Plantationocene (2017–23), a live audiovisual essay, or live powerpoint cinema. It 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 fieldwork in 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 triangular 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.

Iterations of the map are extrapolated from ‘Saharan Dust Off West Africa’ Credit: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC, 2003.…