Grab and run pack
Los Angeles, California
0002024 CE
Lauren Oya Olimina: I assembled a survival pack that can be grabbed when you have to get out of the house fast, containing a hatchet, two small metal pots, a few $100, an old canteen, a plastic bottle, matches, change of clothing (including shoes), comb, soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, tampons, toilet paper, bandages, pins, needles, and thread, alcohol, aspirin, spoons and forks, can opener, pocket knife, acorn flour, dried fruit, roasted nuts and edible seeds, dried milk, sugar and salt, my survival notes, plastic storage bags, and plantable raw seed, my Earthseed notebook. I stowed all this in a pair of old pillowcases rolled into a blanket pack tied with clothesline. I made it easy to open the top, so that I could get my journal in and out, change the water and food, and to check on the seed. The last thing I wanted to find out was that instead of carrying plantable seed or edible food, I've got a load of bugs and worms.
Grab and run pack
Los Angeles, California
0002024 CE
Lauren Oya Olimina: According to my father, the big city is a carcass covered with too many maggots. Los Angeles is chaos, violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. The penalty for being too poor to be worth robbing is beating, rape, and/or death. If there is one thing scarier than a dystopian novel about the future, it is one written in the past that has already become true. Parable of the Sower, written in 0001993 CE is about a LA of the future (0002024-0002027 CE) on fire.
Grab and run pack
Los Angeles, California
0002024 CE
The deepening tragedy is palpable, life coming apart like a rope breaking a strand at a time. There is that fire addicts drug with its dozen or so names; Ro or Pyro (short for pyromania), Blaze, Fuego, Flash, Sunfire…. it makes the leaping patterns of fire more intense than sex, causing a real orgy of burning in the dry straw of Southern California. Fires are set because people are frustrated, angry, and hopeless, all that remains for them is the power to make others more miserable than they are.
Grab-and-Run Survival Pack
Los Angeles, United States
c. 0002025-0002027 CE
The Grab-and-Run Survival Pack was excavated from the remains of a fortified enclave in Los Angeles, lived in by Lauren Oya Olimina. In addition to damage caused during burial, the objects show evidence of burning, associated with the violent destruction of the surrounding enclave buildings by drug fuelled Pyro gangs in 0002027 CE.
Recently exhibited in ‘Objects of the Misanthropocene: A Time-Travelling Exhibition from the Museums of Beyond’.
The Illegal Museum of Beyond has given permission for forensic investigations (x-ray imaging and micro excavations) to take place. Please look out for Theatre of Conservation updates on the contents of the kit. Link to 3D Photogrammetry model
Emergency survival kit
Los Angeles, California
c. 0002025-0002035 CE
The excavated remains of an emergency survival kit, also known as a "bug out bag" or a "get out of dodge" kit. Most people in LA in the pre-Derangement times assembled a grab and run bag, pre-emptive action in response to extreme perceptions of daily risk. This included political and natural disasters, war, famine, pandemics, fire, earthquakes, tsunami, and volcanic eruptions.
Sacrifice objects in worship rituals
Los Angeles, California
c. 0002025-0002050 CE
Bundle of cremated remains is the residue of ancient kinship ritual. Pre-Derangement humans believed in the existence of enduring souls and spiritual after worlds. They offered sacrifice to ancestors as part of daily family life to reinforce the cohesiveness of blood relationships. These offerings were burned at the ritual site of ancestors, fire was purification said to forge relations between the profane world of the living and the sacred world of the ancestors.
Informed by Butler, Octavia. E., 1993. Parable of the Sower