As the Earth’s climate reaches a state of constant instability, there is growing awareness of how global warming can affect human rights and increase social strife. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which political violence and human rights abuses, from past and present, constitute driving factors in the transformations of the global environment and climate. Drawing from a series of cases across the global deforestation belt, Paulo Tavares traces the relations between histories of colonization, environmental destruction and climate change. Often deployed under the guise of “development”, the visualization of such means of violence against nature lead us to recognize that, alongside local communities, nonhuman forms of life are also its contemporary refugees.

This lecture draws from a project presented at the 3rd Oslo Architecture Triennial curated by After Belong Agency

Paulo Tavares is an architect and urban researcher who has exhibited and lectured internationally and taught at Cornell University, Princeton University, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, and Centre for Research Architecture – Goldsmiths, University of London. He currently lives in São Paulo and frequently collaborates with Forensic Architecture.

This event is presented in conjunction with Paulo Tavares’ lecture at Carleton University’s Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism on 28 November 2016 titled, In the Forest Ruins (Towards a Politics of Design Beyond the Human).