Usufructuaries of earth, Life and Death Beyond the Boundary, Conversation 24 May 2024

Описание: 24 May 2024
Life and Death Beyond the Boundary
Conversation between Brenna Bhandar, Yvonne Phyllis, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore (online), moderated by Layal Ftouni

Amidst ongoing ecocide and genocide, Brenna Bhandar considers the colonial and racial dynamics inherent to the legal architecture of modern property law. Yvonne Phyllis dwells on the question of belonging to earth (rather than the claim of earth belonging to us) as an assertion of land reclamation for unfree farmworkers across generations. Ruth Wilson Gilmore foregrounds abolition geography as solidarities of place-making across interconnected geographies. Bringing together their respective contributions, the conversation posits “usufructuaries of earth” as an undoing of the idea of individual exclusive land ownership as we know it. In so doing, the conversation reconceives usufruct that collapses enclosures of—and boundaries between—life and death. “Life and Death Beyond the Boundary” refutes the necropolitics of private property form, and contemplates instead possibilities of usufruct emancipated from colonial capital’s scripts of dispossession.

Convention, chapter three of Usufructuaries of earth, has been conceptualized by artist and researcher Marwa Arsanios and BAK convener of research and publications Wietske Maas in dialogue with BAK coordinator of research and publications Alexandra Martens Serrano, the BAK team, and all convention contributors. Video editing by Geo Barcan.