Imani Jacqueline Brown – Forest Islands of our Ecological Diaspora

Sonic Acts Podcast

In Louisiana, artist, activist, writer, and architectural researcher Imani Jacqueline Brown uncovers Black antebellum cemeteries – portals to recover and remember Afro-diasporic ecological praxes. Between 1820 and 1865, enslaved people were forced to clear Louisiana’s primordial forests to make way for the expansion of cane. They preserved small sections of forest where their loved ones were interred. These groves are both remnants of the erased bottomland hardwood forest and carefully stewarded microecologies – time capsules of lifeworlds that thrived against all odds in the back-a-plantations. There, enslaved people tended gardens and planted trees; organised dances and rituals; exchanged information and ideas; experimented with temporalities of freedom and plotted revolts. Today, their groves, which have survived generations of racial violence, industrial encroachment, and climate disaster, stand as the frontlines of more-than-human, intergenerational resistance to the continuum of extractivism. 24 Feb 2024 Amsterdam, Netherlands → Explore more of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 programme at 2024.sonicacts.com CREDITS Production: Sonic Acts Camera: Engage! TV Intro sound: Jessica Ekomane Intro design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser Realised by Paradiso & Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.