a reflection on the folly that justifies the need for an alphabet to possess one too many sets of letters.
in the beginning all was commons.
in the end all shall be claimed.
man opened his eyes.
man stumbled upon nature.
man learnt to harvest from his surroundings water, food, energy, dreams and aspirations.
man thrived in the years that followed.
somewhere along the way fences began to be drawn,
things began to be claimed.
first, they came for the lands.
spaces people dwelt in,
hills, valleys and meadows that fed them,
paths created under thousands of feet, hooves and wheels.
all became assets.
water followed.
to drink it,
wash in it,
sail on it,
all became a privilege to be obtained.
then everything that grew on the soil,
all that was buried deep beneath.
they didn’t shy away from solitude of high mountains,
the mystery of bottomless pits,
nor the infinitude of the sky.
they claimed seeds, cells, molecules.
they claimed islands, continents, planets.
they claimed tales, knowledge, procedures.
they took and they took.
and little by little,
the words of our vocabularies
became Capitalized and capitalized.
Apples and Blackberries ceased to be fruits.
FOX and JAGUAR, animals.
Tide was domesticated for laundry machines,
Shell unleashed to wage war on all lifeforms,
Galaxy reduced to a candy bar.
answers began being sought in Nature, and wisdom in LIFE.
the lessons of TIME, began to mean something different,
to CITIZENs that are bought and sold.
saturated by LINEs that don’t connect them,
they accept their lives to be filled with GAPs.
comforted by the vow of disposable products to Always be there,
they Wish away the pressure of a competition-ridden life,
dazed by the anticipation of becoming SUPREME.
hardly possible to blurt out a sentence without stepping on someone’s property it seems.
all that was around became obtained.
nature has been claimed,
yes,
but so have humans.
to speak,
to move,
to feel,
to act,
is no longer within their power to grant themselves.
needing permission to even word out their thoughts,
they’re trapped in this impossible reality of all CAPS,
that affords neither navigation nor escape.
in the beginning all was commons,
in the end all shall be claimed.
claimers beware.
in claiming the other,
you claim your own destruction.
for a day will come when the claimed shall rise.
that day no wall of concrete and barbed wire is high enough,
nor any contract in ink or bits perpetuate enough,
to shield you from being disclaimed.
and thus shall dawn a new beginning.
author
This is a contribution by a projektado member, supported by open collective discussions and feedback from the rest of the projektado collective. The decision to not individually name the authors is to take clear distance from the overwhelming presence of individualistic and self- serving practices in design today, and instead focus on the role of collective action and shared values.
Whilst we maintain at times contrasting individual and personal opinions, styles and approaches, we all understand that our production is part of a discussion we share and that is motivated by a collective goal, and that therefore, we all feel represented by.
first published for projektado magazine issue 1: anonymity in design / may 2021
