Research Project with Cédrine Scheidig, 2025–in progress

«Black Snow» is a collaborative research project initiated by French-Caribbean artist Cédrine Scheidig with Basel-based visual artist Janis Polar. It seeks to explore border-crossing entanglements in histories and geographies of sugar, from the Caribbean over the Everglades all the way to Basel, investigating the Plantation and the burning cane field as an every active site of post-colonial and ecological injustice: How are we differently entangled to geographies of sugar? How can images of burning plantations become evocative for common ways of resisting? Via images, archives, histiorical and contemporary research, dialogue and public outreach, «Black Snow» seeks to explore the visual and narrative potential of what TJ Demos has described as «burning aesthetics of ecological chaos and catastrophe«, investigating them as not just mere, empty media fragments but as both mental and physical sites for social justice and decolonial imaginaries.

«Black Snow» will result into an audiovisual installation and different public outreaches.