Temporary Autonomous Zone

The Market Estate Temporary Autonomous Zone is over.

Market Estate TAZ at night

Market Estate TAZ at night

Market Estate TAZ at night

Thanks to the Market Estate Team and Denisa Sengerova who sewed the flag

The Market Estate Temporary Autonomous Zone was declared today (1st March 2010) and will run until Sunday (7th March 2010)

Market Estate TAZ

Market Estate TAZ

We will be hoisting the flag to declare the Market Estate Temporary Autonomous Zone on Monday 1st March at 1pm.  Everyone welcome.

Tamworth Block

Final Design

The vast majority of votes were placed for this design; voting was slightly skewed by the presence of several children who decided that they wanted this flag in these colours, weren’t going to have any truck with bourgeois notions of liberal democracy and cast multiple votes.  This seems to me to be as good a way of any of selecting the image.

Here are some images from the voting at the party yesterday – the election officials observed some irregularities but have declared the vote to be ‘free and fair’

voters considering their options

democracy in action

more voters make their choice

some irregular voting patterns were noticed

These ideas are based on a encircled star of Ishtar/Astarte from ancient Mesopotamia

Option a) is straight forward but on option b) I have mirrored the pattern of the flag of Christiania, this tripling could also be read as duality-plus-one.

Ishtar/Astarte Option A

Ishtar/Astarte Option B

With these designs I have taken the star of Astarte and combined it with the Hopi brotherhood symbol, I suppose this could also be taken as some form of parenthesis around the star. On this symbol the left-hand side is higher, something that is uncommon in western iconography where the right-hand is generally presented as higher (better). I am left-handed and therefore like the reversal.

Astarte/Brotherhood Option A

Astarte/Brotherhood Option B

The final set of ideas have take the Hopi symbol back to a possible origin point as a hand gesture (I am really just guessing here) and combined it with the star. The drawing of the hands is deliberately stylised – I am not sure if they are are right like this so i might work on them some more.

Astarte/Hands Option A

Astarte/Hands Option B