The project interrogates the concept of “abstract modernity” as it seeks to understand the term through its preoccupation with the way technological modernity further dehumanizes black lives. For example, a pin on Google Maps for Ignatius Sancho’s birthplace would simply appear as a floating red marker in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean followed by the text “The World’s second largest ocean.” Google Maps does not possess the capability to pin a slave ship, where Sancho is said to have been born in numerous sources. What do concentric spaces in slavery look like (Atlantic Ocean, slave ship, and so forth). How can we apply the terms nationalism and transnationalism for black lives born en route and outside of national borders?

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Starting with Ignatius Sancho’s birthplace in the Atlantic Ocean, the project draws on Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s examination of the silences in the past to understand how modern-day archivists deal with the silences in the archive.