Paper short abstract:

ferryman is a short-film that uses the decolonial practice of 're-reading' on an 'edge-land' of modern Britain, to reveal the centrality of this anonymous landscape to Britain's colonial past and present.

Paper long abstract:

The work engages in a form of rereading that deconstructs the origins of imperial expansion and domination, using the perspective of a ferryman who has for seven centuries continuously piloted the route between Gravesend and Tilbury, on southern and northern banks of the Thames respectively. The ability of the ancient ferryman to see time not in years but in centuries allows us to consider on a wider scale grand narratives of colonial change, and to consider foundational moments in the construction of the west. As such, the ferryman allows us to see and understand the structures that make up the ‘coloniality of power,’ structures that to this day organise social power relations. It also proposes a wider practice of rereading landscape, interrogating the historical processes and the contribution of colonial violences to the land around us.