Abstract
ELEMENTAL investigates the impacts of constructing the 1554-kilometre-long Maya Train tracks [Yucatec Maya: Tsíimin K'áak; Spanish: Tren Maya], traversing Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Currently under construction, this large-scale infrastructure affects a fragile geological system and forests that shelter freshwater sources on which many depend. This research aims to explore how official discourses projecting a future imaginary of progress and economic growth are contested by local communities, including other-than-humans, such as water bodies. In collaboration with civil society groups, this research will engage with narratives of resistance against extractivism, especially as expressed through art and cultural activism. Drawing on notions of 'the planetary' and polychronic temporalities, co-created mappings of inhabited past-present-future imaginaries will be employed to determine narratives of exploitation, environmental degradation and past broken worlds that inform current and emerging practices of multigenerational care and solidarity within the habitat of many—humans and nonhumans alike. Herewith, the project seeks to relate critical heritage and post-humanist perspectives to environmental justice. The project aims to present the concept of 'elemental heritage' as an approach for advocating affective methodologies that critique heritage paradigms perpetuating exploitative practices, while, at the same time, imagining ways beyond these paradigms.
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