Project title
Benevolences: regeneration ideal in colonial practices
Research question
How have the ideas of benevolence and regeneration been mobilised within domestic colonialism?
Project description
Benevolences is a fiction film project that explores the ideological interplay between benevolence, regeneration, and colonialism. Grounded in historical research, it investigates how these ideals were mobilised in domestic colonial projects to regulate and reform marginalised populations.
The film takes as its point of departure the Dutch Colonies of Benevolence: a 19th-century initiative that sought to combine agricultural labour with moral reform. The project examines the ethical contradictions inherent in these institutions, where intentions of care coexisted with coercion, and benevolent reform was entangled with spatial and social segregation.
Rather than offering a historical reconstruction, the film interprets the emotional and ideological afterlives of such systems, tracing how they may persist in contemporary narratives, values, and social practices. It questions how frameworks rooted in colonial logic and paternalism continue to shape current understandings of welfare, regeneration, and social order.
The research draws on the work of former NIAS fellows on the Colonies of Benevolence and domestic agrarian colonialism.
Selected publications
Screenings, exhibitions and residencies
Upcoming 2025
- PROSPECTS 2025, Rotterdam Art Week, Mondriaan Fonds, Rotterdam, NL
2024
- R(a/u)pture 2, Program #1, Academie SLAC, Leuven, BE
- Seoul Animal Film Festival, Short Competition, Seoul, SK
- Labocine – Science New Wave, October Issue, Online
- Metropolis Festival x IFFR, RTM Program, Rotterdam, NL
- International Film Festival Rotterdam, World Premiere of Ninfa Fluida, Rotterdam, NL
2023
- Hydromedia: Seeing with Water, Symposium, HKU, Utrecht, NL
- Campsite Residency, Time Window residency program at TENT, Rotterdam, NL