MANIFEST Newsletter: Road to the Exhibition in Nantes!

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Road to the Final Exhibition:

Project MANIFEST — in numbers!

Project MANIFEST and its Final Exhibition "Afterimages and Perspectives of Colonial Enslavement" is the product of an inspiring cross-border cooperation. For the past two years, we have been joining our efforts — as a diverse, varied group of individuals and organisations — to carry out a multifaceted collaboration around the topic of the transatlantic trade of enslaved people. This is what the process and its components looked like, in numbers:

🎨 22 artists from 13 countries, presenting 13 works ranging from cinema to music, poetry, film, and digital art, seeking to contribute with new perspectives to the re-imagination of Europe’s collective memory of the trade;
🤝5 European partners — Khora (Denmark), Les Anneaux de la Memoire (France), Pro Progressione (Hungary), Gerador (Portugal), and CUMEDIAE aisbl (Belgium) —, whose collaborative efforts have been instrumental in bringing the project to life;
🌍3 artistic residencies hosted in Budapest/Zsennye, Lisbon, and Copenhagen;
📹 1 immersive Exhibition aiming to provide an innovative perspective on the history and legacies of the transatlantic trade of enslaved people, placing art at the heart of the evocation of collective memories.

💡Interested in joining our conversation? See you in Nantes from September, 19th to October, 6th!

Learn more on MANIFEST Final Event here!

Unveiling the poster of "MANIFEST: Afterimages and Perspectives of Colonial Enslavement!"

🔍 Unveiling the poster of our exhibition “MANIFEST – Afterimages and Perspectives of colonial enslavement!”

📚 Featuring scrapbooking techniques and iconic elements from the MANIFEST Resource Center, the poster’s visual explores the history of our Colonial past through four major axes.

📌 Transatlantic Trade: Iconographies highlight maritime aspects, forced migrations, stages of enslavement history, and commemorative architectural elements.

🎨 Featured elements: “The three caravels of Christopher Columbus” (Rafael Monleon y Torres), Marie-Séraphique plan (18th century), Speech on the Abolition of Slavery (1794), Door of No Return (Benin - Ouidah).

📌 Cultural Heritage: Iconographies represent cultural legacies, highlighting music, statues, social movements, and emotional aspects.

🎨 Featured elements: W. C. Handy at Sportsman Park (1944), Removal of the A. Lopez Statue (Barcelona), the March of 23 May 1998 (Paris).

📌 Economy and Territory: Iconographies focus on the economic aspects, particularly agriculture and resource exploitation.

🎨 Featured elements: world map by Diogo Ribeiro (1900), trade-card “Sir Hans Sloan’s Milk Chocolate,” Enslaved people at a Coffee Yard in a Farm (1882), sugar cane field in Guadeloupe.

📌 Digital Technologies: Iconographies reflect the integration of digital tools like audio, video, projection, augmented, and virtual reality into the art.

MANIFEST Resource Book: Articles of the Month

SLAVERY, FORCED LABOUR, AND MIGRATION IN THE EUROPEAN EMPIRES

The history of slavery in modern times is not limited to the Atlantic slave trade; it encompasses the slave trade in the Mediterranean and Central Asia, on the one hand, and the experiences of enslaved “whites” across the Atlantic in the 17th century, on the other. The slave trade connected to the plantations continued into the 19th century, and from the middle of that century onwards, was accompanied by more or less forced forms of immigrant labour, particularly from Asia, destined for the Americas, but also for the Indian Ocean. In the 20th century, international institutions preferred to use the term “forced labour” rather than “slavery.”

Click here to read the full article!

THE UNITED PROVINCES AND THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

With more than 550,000 African captives embarked between 1596 and 1829, the Dutch trade of enslaved people represents 5% of the total Transatlantic slave trade. As such, the Dutch were less prominent traders than other European nations like the British, the French and the Iberian powers. Still, they played an important role in putting the trade in place during key moments, dominating the trade during short periods in the 17th century, and diminishing sharply in the last quarter of the 18th century. There activities are strongly linked to the Ghanian fortress Elmina, Dutch Brazil and the former colonies of Suriname and the Dutch Antilles.

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