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POWER · Vertical

POWER

How institutions name, un-name, and define what counts as record.

A domed marble rotunda. At the centre of the curved wall a dark recessed case stands inside a columned stone surround, flanked by two American flags. A large mural fills the wall on either side, each showing a crowd of men in eighteenth-century dress. Two tall columns rise in front of the case. Low glass display cases lit from within are arranged in a semicircle across a polished patterned floor of inlaid stone.

POWER investigates the apparatus behind the record itself — how naming and un-naming are practiced as policy, how organized power moves above the line of public legibility, and how the federal record decides what survives as history.

KEPT — the builders on the record, in the present tense →

Foundation

FOUNDATION The Out-Caste Doctrine On Caste, the Undesirables, and the Sovereignty of Those the System Was Never Built For HUB The Out-Caste Doctrine On Caste, the Undesirables, and the Sovereignty of Those the System Was Never Built For FOUNDATION The Sovereign Publishing Manifesto Your intellect is your currency. How will you capitalize? HUB The Sovereign Publishing Manifesto On owning the ground you build on. The argument in one sitting.

10 essays published

8 min UNASKED Under a proposed rule, no question on race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation would appear on the count's forms.
11 min CLANDESTINE They held a warrant from London. Boston's white Masons answered that they had been made clandestinely.
20 min THE COUNTED CROWD Before you trust a pattern, ask one question of it. Ask who got counted.
HOLLOWED 22 min THE CONCESSION The gap is not an oversight.
HOLLOWED 28 min ORIGIN OF THE SEARCH TERMS The letters cited waste, fraud, and abuse. The court ordered the money back. How USDA decided is still unanswered.
24 min OUTSIDER WITHIN Three friends went out on the water with Nolan Wells. He didn't come back.
NAMED 33 min POSTPONED The records were not denied. They were postponed, to a disclosure the statute commands by January 8, 2044.
HOLLOWED 25 min RECARVED The clause did not change. The test underneath it did. Eight days later, Tennessee redrew the map.
ERASED 32 min ROBESON A state representative named Penn for decades of displacement. Penn's own history records its hand in Unit 3 planning.
NAMED 20 min NAMING MACHINE They didn't erase the history. They restored truth and sanity to it.

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On the wire
NEW UNASKED RECOGNIZED CONSENTED SUBSIDIZED TRANSFER STATION CLANDESTINE PROMISED UNSEARCHABLE RESTORED BORROWED THE COUNTED CROWD BARRIER THE CONCESSION COMPROMISE ORIGIN OF THE SEARCH TERMS OUTSIDER WITHIN ABANDONED COURTESY DIGITAL USER ACCOUNT REFUSE UNNECESSARY PREDICTIVE Ellora Derenoncourt and Her Co-Authors Built the Line DESIGNATED SUBSTANTIAL AND EFFECTIVE COMPLIANCE ACTION PLAN POSTPONED RECARVED ROBESON Without a Word for It What Was Buried, Not Broken Money's A Loan Before It's A Thing NAMING MACHINE BLIGHT REDLINE CLEARANCE DENIED