Treasured Island

Madagascar Expedition

Unknown fields

Unknown Fields is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness its technology and culture set in motion. Tales from the Dark Side of the City is a book series that forms an atlas to the territories and stories of a city that stretches across the entire planet,  a city that sits between documentary and fiction, a city of dislocated sites, of drone footage and hidden-camera investigations, of interviews and speculative narratives, of toxic objects and distributed matter from distant grounds. They are a collection of tales from the constellation of elsewheres that are conjured into being by the city’s wants and needs, fears and dreams.

In Treasured Island Unknown Fields travels through Madagascar to catalogue the push and pull of economy and ecology and meet the illegal traders of the world’s luxury brands. In times past an anarchist community of pirates called Madagascar home. It was an island beyond the law and off the map, a place of rogues, booty and bounties. This book unravels the contemporary black market supply chain that strings the precious gem stones from the wild west mining towns of Madagascar to the celebrity necklines and trembling newlywed fingers of the city.  One of the planet’s most precious ecological treasures is home to one of its poorest nations and in the shadows of the world’s desires we uncover some of the complex value negotiations that play out across this unique island.

Part of the Collection: Tales from the Dark Side of the City (6 Vol.)