This is the design I created for the Justseeds/Culture Strike portfolio Migration Now!. I wanted to illustrate the text from B. Traven’s book The Death Ship:
“To be hungry is human. To have papers or not to have papers is inhuman. It is against nature’s laws…The state cannot make use of human beings. It would cease to exist. Human beings only make trouble. Men cut out of cardboard do not make trouble.”
It is a story of a wayward American sailor dealing with the bureaucracy of newly formed European nation-states. His existence is frequently questioned solely based on the absence of a passport.
We are citizens of this planet and government documents are consistently used to prevent the ability of our movements on our home. I dream of a world without these boundaries and institutions.
An actual copy of a form from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP Form I-94) which features fields for an admission number, names, last names, and citizen’s country. In these fields, handwritten text in Spanish states: “Los documents, no definen al ser humano. ¡Imagina un mundo sin fronteras!
