Colonise the Cracks by Ana Benlloch 2007 --------------- Some space is wasteland, some space is glossy. Some space makes you invisible, some space puts your face everywhere. Some space is yours by contract, some space is yours through time. This is my home, it wasn’t always, when I fi rst arrived I didn’t speak the language, shouted nonsense into the void, shockingly naive about the basics of this new world, but slowly I moved in, learnt how to get by. Username, click, click, click, sticky with sweat and skin the borrowed interface slithers under hand itching with possibilities. How quickly can I build a new home, now the old one has rotted? Throw it together from old models, cram code together, no time to learn how it works, must be bigger, brighter, bolder than the last one. I’m smooth and clean, covering the cracked waste I was yesterday, look at me, so new, buy, buy, buy. I’ve moved in so tight they couldn’t scrape me off if they wanted, roots and corrosion in the mainframe, moving like mould through the gates, turning the colours of your logos. I live in the cracks, stuck to the side of a gleaming edifice, tarnishing it with my droppings. Colonise slowly, find the gaps for things to happen, give a false name then move in. Once you see how it works, you can gently move things around, quietly, so no-one notices at first, a little piece at a time. Where they want you to buy and sell, you can give and receive; where they want you to separate and divide, you can meet and connect; where they want you to simplify and be predictable, you can multiply and surprise. Under the screen, the beach.