Through the media of essay, film, and drawing, The Cosmogony of (Racial) Capitalism is a design-led investigation into the material cultures present at the birth of capitalism.

Narrated and directed by Dele Adeyemo and co-written with editor Christxpher Oliver, the film weaves together personal archival footage gathered over several years whilst researching and visiting the ruins of West Africa’s slave factories. Through this audio-visual essay, a sense of these geographies emerges, whilst their role in the creation of racial capitalism’s world system is centred.

The project was originally presented at the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial in 2020, titled Empathy Revisited.