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This paper interrogates the extent to which imaginaries of climate and ecological breakdown attend to the memories, knowledges, and experiences of communities already impacted by histories of racism, colonialism, and poverty. Drawing on insights from Black studies and decolonial thinking, the article reflects on how the causes and effects of anthropogenic climate change can be mapped onto geographies of racialised violence and social dispossession. Specific emphasis is given to Rio de Janeiro, notably its port area, a geographical space where future-oriented narratives remain oblivious to the city's history of anti-Black violence and Indigenous genocide. In parallel, the paper looks at the recently built Museum of Tomorrow and its public representations of the Anthropocene. Overall, the article contends that pluralising accounts of the Anthropocene might offer alternative epistemic entry points for understanding and interrupting the mounting ecological catastrophe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explicate our research on technology-mediated urban experience specific to two hyper-local tests in which the space of the 'public' is transformed into a virtual network by connective broadcasting. The first case study presents collective mapping in Rio de Janeiro toward increased civic engagement and sustainability, the second tests documentation of political demonstrations for strategic and archival purposes for Occupy Boston. Grouped under the term "participatory urbanism," the projects intend to explore how an individual activates interstitial space (between the physical city and hovering networks, between public and private) by engaging technology and civic media to affect change in the built environment. The physical and virtual environments serve as reciprocal sources of information, engendering a collective practice of shared encounters. We investigate how such encounters of user-centered activity through mobile and web-based media support or implicate the perception and manipulation of the built environment over spans of time and locations, and will highlight qualitative elements of a mobile and web platform designed for successful civic engagement and participatory urbanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay provides a brief introduction to this special issue focused on the life and work of Black Brazilian scholar-activist Abdias Nascimento. The contributors include, Vera Lucia Benedito, Ollie Johnson, Zachary Morgan, Elisa Larkin Nascimento, and Cheryl Sterling who all participated in a 2015 conference at Africana Studies at Brown University. This group of scholars aptly illustrate that Nascimento had long contributed to the internationalization of Black Studies as a field in US academe and he was crucial in establishing Brazil as a central component of the Black World. The essays have much to teach us about Nascimento's views on the relationship between art and politics, the role of military service in shaping his activism, the significance of black politicians in the reconceptualization of Brazilian democracy, and the importance of preserving archives and expanding our understanding of the Black radical tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the richness of the association between space, culture, and memory. It starts by indicating the importance of migration in the formation of Brazil and moves on to explore the relation between memory and space by showing how memories can be inscribed in the visible spatiality of a city. It goes briefly back to Marcel Proust's work in order to further suggest links between spatiality and remembrance. Finally Félix Guattari's notion of affect is used to account for the impact that spatial experiences may have upon us. The two spaces--previous and present--eventually superimpose forming a complex arrangement that conveys the idea of displacement. Throughout the article, selected, in-depth interviews with Italian and French immigrants who live in Rio de Janeiro--and who relate memories brought about by the experience of space--provide a lively and consistent background to the arguments proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]