(Post)colonial Sensations. Remote Sensing Technologies and Cultural Memory in Art and Science

The essay critically discusses the use of remote sensing technologies in contemporary media art and sciences. It undertakes a thorough analysis of Tropics, the award-winning work of the French artist Mathilde Lavenne. The artist used lidar scanning to visualize the stories and memories gathered from interviews with inhabitants of the Mexican town Jicaltepec, who are mostly descendants of the French settlers-colonizers. Through the use of apparatus designed for architectural and geodetic purposes, along with its scientific and commercial contexts, questions arise about the relations between modern technoculture, nature, cultural memory, and overlapping colonial logic, in knowledge production and the micropolitics of affects management.