Micropolitiques des plantes — Affinitiés des Sols. Soils Affinities — Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers — Meeting — Slash Paris

Past: Saturday, May 19, 2018 2 PM → 10 PM

Meeting at the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers followed by a meal

Uriel Orlow continues his exploration of the intersections between colonial history and plant species with specific territories. These silent witnesses, known as plants, reveal a history that has evolved at both local and global levels, following migratory flows, the movements of human and vegetable populations, and the historical, social, economic and political trajectories at the origin of the agricultural landscapes of today.

Affinités des sols . Soils Affinities looks back to the vegetable-growing days of Aubervilliers before it gave up its land to the industrial revolution, and the 1885 Berlin conference paved the way for some of Europe’s agricultural production to be transferred to Africa. Crops once produced in Aubervilliers were relocated to Mali and Senegal and are now sold in the city of Aubervilliers’s Chinese and Pakistani grocery stores and consumed by the local population, many of whom have also taken the path of migration from their countries of origin to France and Aubervilliers.

Based on this dynamic of plants as both political and economic agents, Uriel Orlow has organised two days of meetings and talks, the first of which, What plants tell us about Aubervilliers, will explore the local axis; the second, The Micropolitics of Plants, will look at the post-colonial aspect.

This second meeting organized at the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers will examine the structural arrangements and subjective processes that result from moving plants, from the perspective of the colonial and post-colonial contexts of their relocation.

Through the prism of the economic philosophy of plants, the internationalization of cultivation generates a social and economic division of soil and labour.

Serge Volper, author of Une histoire des plantes coloniales, and director of the library of tropical agronomy, will speak to us about French colonial agriculture, while political scientist Françoise Vergès will take the point of view of the banana to speak to us about global geo-political and economic conflicts. Bouba Touré, writer, photographer and co-founder of the Somankidi Coura Cooperative, along with artist Raphaël Grisey, will describe how the Cooperative was founded in 1977 in Mali while he was immigrant worker in France. They will present the book they wrote together. Finally, Shela Sheikh and Ros Gray will present the latest edition of the journal Third Text which deals with the history of agricultural land and conflicts relating to it.

With Serge Volper (author of Une Histoire des plantes coloniales), François Vergès (political scientist), Bouba Touré (writer, photographer and co-founder of the Coopérative de Samandiki Coura), Raphaël Grisey (artist), Shela Sheikh (theorist in postcolonial studies), Ros Gray (art theory specialist) and Uriel Orlow (artist).

Free admission. Reservation at reservation@leslaboratoires.org or 01 53 56 15 90