Contaminated Temporalities
University of Amsterdam
September, 2023
Colonial time is not linear: it turns and swirls in different
directions. To understand the conflicting and overlapping temporalities
of the Russian settler colonial project, I will read an archive of
Soviet visual culture alongside the archives of nuclear contamination of
water, soil and human and non-human bodies. Leaving residues in bodies
and lands, the long-term violence of Russian settler colonialism
traverses its visions of progress. The consequences of Soviet
futuristic terraforming visions stay in the soil, water and bodies long
after the dissolution of the USSR.
Settler Colonialism, Visual Culture