Visualising Relations to Land of Traditional and Indigenous Peoples (VRL)

Visualising Relations to Land (VRL) will test the application of 3D Digital Environments (DEs) for visualising the unique relationships that Traditional and Indigenous Peoples (TIPs) have with land and territory. Through a transdisciplinary methodology, joining forensic architects, sociologists and geographers in collaboration with TIPs organisations that have been affected by the expansion of renewable energy projects into their territories, across Norway, Portugal, and Brazil, VRL will address how Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedures fail to recognise TIPs relations with land. In doing so, it will drive novel research in visual arts and in the fields concerned with the socio-environmental impacts of renewable energy production.
The research addresses how the global energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is disproportionately impacting the territories of Traditional and Indigenous Peoples across the world. This is due to a growing demand for the extraction of critical materials such as lithium, copper, and cobalt, which are essential to batteries or the implementation of large-scale wind and solar farms required for producing renewable energy. However, existing procedures for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) required for the approval of renewable energy projects fail to recognise TIPs ways of life and deep relations with land, and are, therefore, unable to adequately consider potential impacts on the ways of life of TIPs. Issues raised by TIPs include the lack of recognition of their use of territories for practices that leave no significant material traces, such as hunting, herding or foraging, for practices of environmental care and maintenance, and more importantly, a lack of recognition of affective and spiritual relations to land. At the same time, TIPs' place-based knowledge and modes of knowledge transmission, such as oral histories, rituals, or artefacts, are not recognised in EIA procedures.
In this context, the...