The
Planetary Portals project examines the colonial afterlife of gold and diamond mining in South Africa by drawing attention to the social and environmental costs of extractive industries. In collaboration with
Kaythryn Yusoff (QMUL),
Kerry Holden (QMUL) and
Casper Laing Ebbensgaard (UEA), we examine how colonial dreams of Empire have been and still are sustained through 'changes of states' – that is, turning clay into bricks, bricks into speculative real estate, real estate into capital, capital into a speculative mining, and diamonds and gold into racialised dreams of Empire.