Wheel of Fortune, Maarten Vanden Eynde in collaboration with Musasa, 2016
2017 - 2021
Triangular Trade
Experimental research project
Involved: Lotte Arndt, Sven Beckert, Alexis Destoop, Marjolijn Dijkman, Femke Herregraven, Alioum Moussa, Peter Pels, Jean Katambayi, Maarten Vanden Eynde.
Participants at LUNÄ talks: Christine Chivallon, Helen Elands, Wouter Elsen, Patricia Fara, Remy Jungerman, Karin Lurvink, Eric Vanhaute, Raf Custers, Jeroen Cuvelier, Zheng Li, Sammy Baloji, Alexis Destoop, Marjolijn Dijkman, Femke Herregraven, Alioum Moussa, Peter Pels, Jean Katambayi, Maarten Vanden Eynde.
Partners: The National Museum, Lubumbashi (CD); Deltaworkers, New Orleans (US); Z33, House for Contemporary Art, Hasselt (BE), Picha, Lubumbashi (DRC), amongst others.
Triangular Trade investigates the influence of transport and trade of pivotal materials like rubber, oil, ivory, copper, diamonds, gold, cotton and uranium, but also people, on exponential economic growth, the creation of nations and other power structures. The project traces back the origin of the different materials and follows their (r)evolutionary paths as they are processed and transformed into 'world changing wonders'.
After several research periods for Triangular Trade in D.R. Congo in 2015 and 2016, investigating the historic under-recognised and often forgotten importance and influence of the Kingdom of Kongo (currently D.R. Congo) and it's natural resources on the development of human kind, the Southern United States were included, where materials like cotton, copper and uranium played a leading role in the transatlantic trade.
Early 2017, the project became public by organising two LUNÄ Talks, one in the framework of Performatik 2017 and one in collaboration with Agora, in Bozar, Brussels, about the specific influence of cotton on the distribution of wealth, the expansion of the slave trade, the Industrial Revolution and the current ecological crisis in relation to GMO cotton, Monsanto monopolies and fast fashion. The Nuclair Culture Project, initiated by Ele Carpenter, in collaboration with Z33 is on the other hand facilitating consequent investigation into the influence of uranium on human civilisation.
Triangular Trade initiates debates, symposia and research residencies and gatherings resulting in several exhibitions focussing on a wide variety of materials and their particular heritage, and a publication bringing these material matters together. Ultimately the entire project merges old and contemporary stories of trade and colonisation with physical remnants of technological evolution.
Related News
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Fall 2021
Livestock Frontiers – CFI Issue 3
Commodity Frontiers Journal, Online
In this issue of Commodity Frontiers, contributors take up issues relating to animals, livestock, and livestock production through a commodity frontiers lens. Fueled by increasing (local, national, imperial, and global) livestock production “developments” and demands for livestock products—most notably (but not only) meat—and reinforced by technoscientific innovations, new livestock frontiers have emerged and spread across the globe. With livestock frontiers we mean both processes and sites in which animals are bred, reared, cured, traded, and commodified in novel ways, by re-allocating land, labour, capital, knowledge, and other resources, to enhance productivity and maximize gains. By doing so, livestock frontiers have changed human-animal and interhuman social relations, economic systems, and ecological landscapes in various and often unintended ways. Furthermore, livestock frontiers have become deeply entangled with frontiers in agriculture, securing the production of fodder crops such as soy and corn. These changes include, but are not limited to, the industrialization of livestock production that we discussed above.
This edition features several interviews, including Maarten Vanden Eynde's interview with Christien Meindertsma, the Dutch designer who has researched and wrote a book called Pig 05049 which relates the many consumer products made from a pig called 05049. They discuss Meindertsma’s motivations for making the book and reflect on some of the challenges of promoting and brining about social change regarding meat (and other) consumption.
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Spring 2021
Stimulant Frontiers – CFI Issue 2
Commodity Frontiers Journal, Online
Commodity Frontiers Initiative explores the history and present of capitalism, contestation, and ecological transformation in the global countryside. Each themed issue includes articles and interviews with experts about studying and teaching commodity frontiers in theory and in practice. The Journal features reflections and reviews on the dynamics of capitalist expansion, social change, and ecological transformation on global as well local scales, in the past and at the present.
Issue 2: Stimulants have, in their own ways, played a leading role in shaping today’s globalised world. Their world-shaping power stems from their double role: as “agents” that stimulate bodies, and as things that “rouse and incite” capital. In this issue of Commodity Frontiers, contributions center on the histories and presents of some of the leading stimulant crops and the sites and processes of their cultivation, expansion, and transformations. Contributors variously consider stimulants from the perspectives of bodies and capital, sometimes touching on their overlaps.
In the framework of the 2nd Commodity Frontiers Initiative Journal with the theme of ‘Stimulants’ Maarten Vanden Eynde interviewed Roger M. Buergel and Sophia Prinz from the Johann Jacobs Museum, which owes its existence to the coffee and cacao trade, but more importantly is unique in its endeavour to lay bare the intrinsically interwoven histories of commodities. The museum is dedicated to the global interdependencies of our life-world that become especially clear when tracing the history of important trade goods and their transport routes.
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14 April 2021
Recommendations for Post-Extractive Futures
EURO—VISION Assembly, Radar & Arts Catalyst, UK (Online)
Organised by Arts Catalyst as part of EURO—VISION, artists Audrey Samson and Francisco Gallardo (FRAUD) will be joined online by Dr Nishat Awan, Dr Btihaj Ajana, Olivier Marboeuf, Jean Katambayi Mukendi and Maarten Vanden Eynde (On-Trade-Off) for a collective conversation around contemporary modes of extraction and expropriation that go beyond natural resources to encompass data, labour, cultures and governance.
In dialogue with the invited artists and researchers, the event will explore how we might start to imagine post-extractive futures? What knowledges, practices and tactics can we mobilise in order to do so?
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Fall 2020
Mineral Frontiers – CFI Issue 1
Commodity Frontiers Journal, Online
Commodity Frontiers Initiative explores the history and present of capitalism, contestation, and ecological transformation in the global countryside. Each themed issue includes articles and interviews with experts about studying and teaching commodity frontiers in theory and in practice. The Journal features reflections and reviews on the dynamics of capitalist expansion, social change, and ecological transformation on global as well local scales, in the past and at the present.
Issue 1: Mineral Frontiers: Capitalism, Contestation, and the Transformation of the Global Countryside. Maarten Vanden Eynde & Marjolijn Dijkman (Enough Room for Space) are the editors of the journal's section Creative Frontiers. For this issue Lotte Arndt and Oulimata Gueye introduce an article on the transnational artist’s collaboration, On-Trade-Off, which critically examines extraction, power structures in global capitalism and the global art world, and searches for alternatives. (This is a pre-publication version of the piece that will appear in the upcoming Vertical Atlas book produced by Digital Earth in collaboration with Het Nieuwe Instituut.)
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29 September 2019
Nuclear Culture: Learning From Deep Time
ONDRAF/NIRAS - National Institute for Radioactive Waste and Enriched Fissile Material, Kastelsedijk, Dessel, BE
How can we imagine the unbelievably long lifespan of radioactive waste? And how do we make it clear to future generations that they are on a disposal site? A few artists worked with these and other questions. During the open house of ONDRAF/NIRAS you will discover the result of their creative exercise in the Installation for the production of monoliths (IPM).
With: Alexis Destoop, Andy Weir, Commonplace Studio, Jesse Howard & Tim Knapen, Thomson & Craighead, Maarten Vanden Eynde.
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26 - 27 June 2017
Nuclear Culture
Field trip to Mol & Dessel, BE
Alexis Destoop and Maarten Vanden Eynde, both involved in Triangular Trade, participated in a field trip organised by Nuclear Culture and will continue their research into uranium. Research trip and in depth introduction looked into the history of Belgian's nuclear industry, properties of radiation, the HADES research lab in Mol, and the test architecture for the Low Level waste site at Dessel, Belgium.
With Jantine Schröder (SCK-CEN), Sigrid Eeckhout (ONDRAF/NIRAS), Maarten Van Geet (ONDRAF/NIRAS), Christoph Depaus (ONDRAF/NIRAS), Ils Huygens (Z33), Ele Carpenter (Nuclear Culture), Maarten Vanden Eynde, Alexis Destoop, Tuur Van Balen, Alison Craighead, Jon Thomson.
Visit of SCK•CEN, ISOTOPOLIS, ESV Euridice and nuclear village of Mol / Atoomdorp Mol, Belgium
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24 May 2017
LUNÄ Talk: Triangular Trade – Cotton
BOZAR, Brussels, BE
'LUNÄ Talk: Triangular Trade - Cotton' will concentrate on the influence of cotton production and trade in relation to the abolition of slavery and colonisation / decolonisation, both historically and as an ongoing influence on contemporary global economy. The overall project Triangular Trade investigates the influence of transport and trade of pivotal materials (like rubber, oil, ivory, copper, cotton, gold and uranium), but also people, on exponential economic growth, the creation of nations and other power structures.
Invited contributors: Helen Elands (art historian, independent researcher, London, UK), Wouter Elsen (Independent video- and photojournalist, co-creator of The Cotton Connection documentary, Ouagadougou, BE / BF), Dr. Patricia Fara (Historian, Eighteenth-century natural philosophy and cultural history of science, University of Cambridge, UK), Remy Jungerman (Artist, based in Amsterdam, SR / NL), Karin Lurvink (Post-doc researcher on the economic impact (direct and indirect, immediate and long-term) of 18th & 19th-century Dutch Republic transatlantic slave-based activities, University of Amsterdam, NL), Prof. Dr. Eric Vanhaute (Professor Economic and Social History and World History, Ghent University, BE), Maarten Vanden Eynde (artist and initiator of ‘Triangular Trade’) and Marjolijn Dijkman (artist and co-host LUNÄ Talk).
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1 April 2017
LUNÄ Talk: IN_DEPENDENCE
PERFORMATIK17 at ERforS HQ, BE
"Without its Eurocentric distortions, decolonization would be at the center of the narrative we tell about the twentieth century - and this retelling would allow us to see that global capitalism today is most fundamentally shaped by the struggle for independence." from 'Empire of Cotton, A Global History' by Sven Beckert.
Take a seat at the LUNÄ table for a discussion about social, political, and ecological (in)dependence. Material aspects are also relevant: especially in relation to cotton, they form a constant theme throughout colonial history and the power structures that dominate today’s world.
Invited contributors: Prof. Sven Beckert (historian, Harvard University, US), Prof. Peter Pels (anthropologist, Leiden University, NL), Christine Chivallon (anthropologist, CNRS, Bordeaux, FR), Helen Elands (art historian, independent researcher, London, UK), Marjolijn Dijkman (artist and initiator of LUNÄ Talks), Maarten Vanden Eynde (artist and co-host) and Alioum Moussa (artist and co-host).
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1 March 2017
Triangular Trade: Launch project
Enough Room for Space
Triangular Trade investigates the influence of transport and trade of pivotal materials like rubber, oil, ivory, copper, cotton and uranium, but also people, on exponential economic growth, the creation of nations and other power structures. The project traces back the origin of the different materials and follows their (r)evolutionary path as they are processed and transformed into 'world changing wonders'.
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30 March - 12 April 2016
Triangular Trade: Research trip
Nuclear Trail, USA
Research period for Triangular Trade by Marjolijn Dijkman and Maarten Vanden Eynde in New Mexico and Arizona to look for remnants of the coinciding Space Age, Atomic Age and Computer Age.
Triangular Trade investigates the influence of transport and trade of pivotal materials like rubber, oil, ivory, copper, diamonds, gold, cotton and uranium, but also people, on exponential economic growth, the creation of nations and other power structures. The project traces back the origin of the different materials and follows their (r)evolutionary paths as they are processed and transformed into 'world changing wonders'.
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March - April 2016
Triangular Trade: Research Residency
Deltaworkers, New Orleans, USA
Report by Maarten Vanden Eynde of a research trip for the development of the project Triangular Trade. For centuries, goods and people, for a long time considered as commodities as well, have been shipped around the world. Triangular Trade focuses on the trade between Africa, Europe and America, i.e. the North Atlantic trade route. For this initial research phase the triangle was narrowed down to the Kingdom of Kongo (representing Africa), New Orleans – and the Southern States (representing America), and Belgium (representing Europe). In the search for traces of African culture in the Southern States has is looking at material remains and influences.