Empire’s Island 

In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, between Africa and South America, lies Ascension Island, ruled by the British administration. Empire’s Island reconstructs the island territory in the form of a video study with a detailed model that shows that the colonial, imperialist era, never really ended. The work tells the history of Ascension and shows how the island has been exploited over three centuries according to the interests of global empires. The territory has been altered after the ideological, economic and military interests of the dominant power structure: from the Dutch empire, which used the island to exile sailors, to the British empire, which sent Charles Darwin to greenify (geoengineer) the island, to the US empire, which, together with the British, built a massive military and planetary surveillance infrastructure on Ascension. Today, the island embodies the visions of billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who want to establish colonies on other planets using Ascension as a model.