The AA VS Climate Cartographies investigates the longue durée of climate change through heritage sites using cartographic methodologies. The first iteration of the program focused on Meroë, specifically the Royal City and its Cemetery, as a foundation for these discussions. The environmental changes affecting the site are historical and continue to evolve, as images from less than a hundred years ago indicate a rapidly shifting ecological system that has left traces on the landscape and the material remains of the site. Recent interventions aim to protect the site from flooding and sandstorms, which have intensified in recent years. The course is structured around three interconnected themes: Critical Climates, Critical Heritage, and Climate Imaginations.

The diverse cohort of students, each with a unique approach to their work, contributed to the critical discussions within the course forum. Almost half of the students were either based in Sudan or had familial connections to Sudan while residing in the Gulf, Egypt, Europe, and the USA. The other half were based in, or connected to, Bahrain, Britain, Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany, Libya, Poland, Uganda, and the USA comprising primarily graduate students focused on design; however, it also included a sound artist and a post-doctoral art historian. They were invited to explore one of four thematic areas: communities, imaginations, materials, and water systems, allowing them to select the theme that resonated most with their passions. The students employed various approaches to creating the maps; they could assess the site from an environmental perspective by examining its current conditions or historical context. Additionally, they could explore the site through imaginative interpretations found in popular media, such as films, exhibitions, and literature. Another option was to engage directly with the communities surrounding the site in response to the project brief. They could also investigate the material aspects of Meroë or draw inspiration from ancient water management systems. Notably, two members of the community group chose to venture beyond their initial theme and focus on agriculture related to the site. Each student selected a specific analytical approach to examine the relationship between climate and the site, guided by their individual interests and practices.

Below, you will find an overview of the projects undertaken by each of the four original groups, which eventually expanded to five. Each group’s contributions are as follows:

• A Human Ecology: Mapping Communities
• An Audio-Visual Essay: Mapping the Imagination
• Green Circles: Mapping Agriculture
• Story of a Black Stone: Mapping Materials
• The Geopolitics of the Nile: Mapping Water

The group identified the communities around the site, including both permanent and temporary ones. They then analyzed the relationships between these communities and the site, examining how each community affected it. This analysis led to the identification of three major settlements. One of these settlements is more closely connected to the site and has a history that can be interpreted through an analysis of its growth morphology. It is more organic and features public spaces. Due to the historical site limiting its expansion, this settlement grows more densely rather than outward. In contrast, the other two communities were less organic and had fewer public spaces. Nearby are smaller settlements, which they attributed to the nature of land ownership in the country, consistent with the rest of North Africa. The land usually belongs to a family and tends to expand over time. This issue of land ownership is significant, as it affects how the ecology around the site changes. The people who inhabit these settlements or frequent the site were categorized into six potentially overlapping groups: inhabitants, farmers, herders, mining groups, specialists, and tourists. Some of these communities have developed deep connections to the land over centuries and through their ancestral generations. Changes in climate are also impacting their livelihoods, which may further affect the environment around them. For example, herders were identified as contributing to desertification, as this leads to the rapid disappearance of vegetation. The group was concerned with flooding and how to connect the settlements to foster better resilience at the site.

The students in this group included: Ahmed Abdelrahim, Almuzn M. Elhassan, Blqees Zuhair, Hadeel Mohamed, Ibrahim Aboagala, Maab Obada, and Malaz Mohamed Ali.

The group developed an audio-visual essay in response to the brief, addressing how maps are often viewed as impartial, scientific, and objective tools within Western societies. However, the creation of maps has historically been influenced by cultural and social connections to the land. In recent years, the advent of digital and photographic technologies, such as Google Earth, has made map creation increasingly dependent on external, non-anthropomorphic surveying. Nevertheless, these technologies can introduce subjective and colonial biases in their representation of places. Through spatial simplification, important topographical details and indigenous knowledge of locations are often lost. The group utilized mapping to combine artistic practices that would produce different perceptions of the site, with the map emerging from aesthetic and syntactic processes that constitute forms of research in their own right. Contemporary discourse on the meanings and functions of cartography often oscillates around the relationship between physical assets and territory. A map has now become one of the key ontological metaphors in philosophical, postcolonial, historical, and literary discourse—a subjective visual representation of the world. It is also a practice and an administrative apparatus applied to space. The group explored the desert as a body beyond borders and examined the Sudanese desert in archives. In this context, the desert is not only a physical location but also a symbol of the vast expanse of human imagination and possibility. Through the project, they sought to explore the cultural and historical significance of the desert and its role in shaping the imagination of the site. This project employs a digital demarcation methodology to understand the site and its complexities, examining non-conventional archives ranging from state archives in Sudan to social media. The result was an audio-visual collage and essay that investigated objects through the lens of repatriations, drawing connections between the design aesthetics of the past and those of contemporary times, along with a Nubia: Cataract 2-6 edition playlist narrating history poetically and harmoniously.

The students in this group included: Hiba Ismail, Joanna Lalowska, Nicole Remus, Muram Shaheen, and Vera-Simone Schulz.

The students in this group were part of the Material Mapping group and chose to focus at a later stage on agriculture. Heba Elidrisi and Jumanah Rizk developed a fifth theme during their work on the Story of a Black Stone project. This project was inspired by the site, which rests on the largest known fossil water reserves in the world, spanning over two million square kilometers across Sudan, Chad, Libya, and Egypt, as well as the industrial production of agriculture near Meroë. They investigated food consumption habits and how they have changed over the years, which has affected the econom and the ability of people to provide for themselves. However, vast lands surrounding the site have been sold and outsourced to serve the food security of countries outside Sudan.

The group developed a poetic and prosaic reading of climate change through the site’s materiality. One member visited the site and took photographs of the erosions she encountered, documenting the color ranges of the materials. The students were inspired by the material weathering over the years and centuries, coupled with the way climate change is reshaping a dark stone with a reddish tone. The materials they documented included iron slag, Nubian sandstone, and granite. The remains of the slag have been well documented by archaeologists, indicating a thriving iron industry at the site, which may have contributed to its environmental decline. Although industrial production of iron continues today, it is on a smaller scale. The students identified two quarries during their research on the site and from lectures: one for Nubian sandstone and the other for granite. They documented the excavation system, which involved narrow trenches and grooves that allow for material mobility. They focused on Nubian sandstone, the material used for the pyramids; historical photos show it appearing black with intricate engravings amid lush vegetation. Today, the surface of the pyramids is almost the same hue as the surrounding desert. This protective black surface is a result of material weathering that led to the creation of “desert varnish,” a solid layer that formed on the exposed part of the Nubian sandstone and became a protective shield for the engravings. In recent years, as the climate around the site changed and led to desertification, desert wind has begun to erode this protective layer. Within the past sixty years, the removal of this layer has become evident as the surrounding area has been losing vegetation. The site is a desert, although it sits atop one of the largest known fossil water reserves in the world, spanning over two million square kilometers across Sudan, Chad, Libya, and Egypt. the students draw a connection between the abrasion of the dark layer of stone and the stigmatization of black skin, as a direct consequence of climate change resulting from the environmental impact of former colonial powers. They were also intrigued by the potential color palette that could be developed from the pigmentation found in materials around the site.

The students in this group included: Hadeel Subahi, Heba Elidrisi, Jumanah Rizk, Medhanit Ayele, Robel Kebede, and Shahd Osman.

The group was more interested in posing questions than making propositions. They began by questioning why floods have increased, despite data showing a decline in rainfall, specifically at the source of the Blue Nile. They found multiple reports documenting aid and immediate responses to the site after flooding but could not locate investigations explaining the changes in Nile patterns, noting that 2020 was a pivotal point of change. They compiled data related to rainfall, particularly at Lake Tana, and observed that the decrease in rainfall did not correlate with the increase in flooding. The next step was to examining the dams for potential connections. They mapped out all the dams on the Nile and discovered that Egypt did not experience any flooding after the construction of the Aswan Dam. Two dams were canceled in Sudan due to concerns about potential flooding. Disputed water resources on the Nile have contributed to the divide between Sudan and South Sudan when the former diverted water away from South Sudan to the north. Part of their exploration involved looking at water management systems at the site itself. The site is elevated, and there appeared to be a rain belt around it that did not impact it. This was seen as essential for understanding the land’s ecology and developing rituals around water flooding, whether from the Nile or other sources. In this project, the students viewed the Nile as one continuous geography that needed to be addressed and understood not solely from the perspective of a nation-state or a single state’s interests, but as a shared resource that can have significant local effects throughout its connected regions.

The students in this group included: Rawan Jahromi, Yasmin Hamad, and Yasmin Hani.