manifesto 


to whom it may concern


We begin at a flood basin
that no longer submerges
and an arid plain gone underwater for the very first time.

This is the sounding of alarm
for the mother who traverses
the two, with life in her womb
and livelihood stuffed
in a single jutesack.

Where there is fluidity
[of land, or otherwise]
there is diaspora-
in search of
a home, a meal,
or perhaps, a heart.

Increasing erraticity
has charted a mass migration
into urbanity
as the last tenable frontier.
Who are we to refute
this global escape
from landscapes
in constant unmaking?


The making [and breaking]
of places is a collective act.
Indeed, even the most
autocratic of societies are,
in fact,
fundamentally democratic.

The legitimacy of the dictator
is often the summation
of all the minute irregularities
of the commons, combined.

A thousand petty thefts
standing in silent judgment
of one grand larceny-
the human collective is
[ever so slightly] fucked.


Ours is a famine of aspiration.

One either partakes in mimicry
[overlaid with the beats
of the day] or perishes.

Art is bland
and Architecture is dead-
a million cookie-cutter houses
in rubber-stamped cemeteries
we call cities.

Form follows fear-
of function, finance, freedom.

As culture and society take on
these new [albeit watered down]
meanings, we burn effigies
of dictators, and smartphones.

Systems and mediums
as perpetrators, and
not merely enablers,
offer a convenient recusal
from convictions of the self.




This is a guerilla collective, operating at the intersection between climate,
people, and politics.
Embracing a spectrum of
improvised methodologies,
we condone arson in the face
of convention to effect
tactical interventions in space
as a function of society.
Our battleground
is the overlap between
denaturing landscapes
and communities
grappling with identity.

Our mandate is a frontier
that lends footing
to the displaced
and connects confluences
to the parched.


Ehsan
Architect \ Convener