Voyaging Vapors

Plant Histories of Plantation Architectures

Morning haze over tobacco crops;
smoke curls from a tobacco pipe;
vaporous opium fumes;
a tobacco barn in flames.

The plantation system in nineteenth-century Southeast Asia saw vapors and substances in transport and transformation, afforded by violent processes crucial to a system of land expropriation. As a starting point, this project takes these materials in transition for a wide-angle view of architectures of the plantation system.