# record_2035-09-24

 
##  fcr

The following piece of writing has been found on a discarded electronic device and translated from Dutch. Since the file was partly damaged, unreadable parts were left as-is, and missing parts marked with "[...]":  

> Ten years after the Pernis bombing, and with ongoing armed conflicts, the wide-ranging ground contamination, destruction of the built environment and physical unsafety of the terrain has made it difficult to conduct on-site research in the larger Rotterdam area, especially near the former sites of oil refineries. However, the ca. WWII 97 bunkers built in the 1940s by the German Wehrmacht near Oostvoorne proved to be resilient structures, and could be accessed by us, albeit involving the considerable risk of moving in their surrounding area. Due to high nitrogen pollution (aerial as well as terrestrial), they have been overgrown by vegetation mixed with the rubble from the large-scale explosions.
  >  
 Our group, the Speculative Forensics Collective, was able to enter the bunkers partly physically, but mostly only with small drones and their cameras (whose signals were compromised by the low light in the bunkers and the high electromagnetic radiation in the area). To our surprise, the bunkers' interiors did not only reveal architectural structures and remnants of former inhabitation or trespassing. In 19 of the 35 bunkers we were able to enter,  there were wall paintings that seemed to have been executed by the same group or person, and be interconnected in their motives and possible coding.
>
> I wrote this protocol in a hazy state of mind, hardly having slept last night because a rat had invaded our dormitory, and we only managed to catch and kill it around five o'clock in the morning, while still recovering from fever contracted from the ticks in the area surrounding the bunkers.
 > [...]
 >
> n grtn    ls vrgtn vrdn, grt   dls vrnitgd n vrlrn gg  n, bst  t n g sl  chts n frgmntrsch n vk nbtru   r hr    ngn. Wr d gburtns    it dudljk n tstbr wrn, zj   z nu vrvgd    slchts trug t vndn n vg, vr   lgn hrnnrn      ldn. Dz hrn  rngn wr   n gknmrkt dr h    frg   ntrsch rd n d bprkt btruwbrhd r   n, ngzin d nuwkurgd fn  mt nrm    d tjd vrt, n ht ghugn bnvd wrdt     r xtrn fktrn. D    ls, it schrp n prcs, zjn ndrhvg n d rs vn tjd n subjctvtt, w   rdoor ht mljk wrdt    ht vr    n mt ng zkrhd t rcnstrurn. Ht prcs vn hrnnrn s hrdr nit lln fhnkljk vn d nhud     ht ghugn, mr k vr d mnr w   p dz hrnnrngn wrdn hrvrmd dr d tjd n d ntrprttv kdrs wrn z    ltst wrdn. Z ntst   t en vr   n dt stds vrdr vrvgt,   k   ng lvnd n   en wnk      vnwcht t   s    ft n    vrmng.
>
 [...]
 > 3) a sword with a wavy, curved blade. Iconographic analysis makes this is a likely depiction of an Islamic scimitar or kilij, as used in the cavalry of medieval Muslim armies. We concluded that the following interpretations are the most plausible:
 > - the bunkers were used, prior to Pernis, as hideouts of militant Islamic organizations or as as drug and/or weapon stashes by organized crime gangs whose members had, at least partly, Islamic cultural and religious backgrounds.
 > - the mural was painted as a commentary on militant Islam and/or the Israeli-Palestinian-Lebanon-Iran armed conflict that started in 2023. It is unclear, however, which political position or ideological affiliation is expressed with the painting.  
 > - the mural(s) were painted immediately after Pernis by survivors who lived in them for shelter. They could be symbols of resistance, or an expression of the inhabitants having believed that the bombing had been carried out by Islamic militants; which may not be a far-fetched scenario given the Islamophobic political climate of the 2010s and 2020s.    
[...]
> 4) a pre-modern village surrounded by a trench.
> - With the drone image of this mural being highly disturbed, and our access to archives and libraries being limited at the moment, we believe this to be a reproduction of either the utopian city of Christianopolis, as told in the homonymous book of the German protestant theologician Johann Valentin Andreae from 1619, or the dystopian city described in the 1623 novel 'Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart' written by the Bohemian philosopher, educationalist and theologician Jan Amos Comenius. Andreae had also been the co-author of the early-17th century manifestos ("Fama" and "Confessio") of Rosicrucianism. In Comenius' books, the Rosicrucians arrive - at some unexpected point - in the dystopian city, promise everyone salvation, but then it turns out that the books they sell with the salvation recipes are all empty.
> - We can only speculate why these images, with their reference to Rosicrucianism, were painted here: as an expression of hope for salvation? Or as a sarcastic commentary on the disappointment of this hope? As an allegory of a closed society that had gone under? Or, on the contrary, as a draft of a future society that would return to closure after failed globalization, with Pernis' oil refineries as an epitome of that failure?
>
> 5) handwritten names on a wall: Henk, Agaarth, [...]. These have been written in an archaic script vaguely resembling Germanic runes and Sütterlin handwriting. We can only speculate that they
> - have been the deliberately archaic visual language of a particular subculture, such as a biker gang or militia that might have used the bunker pre- and/or post-Pernis.
> - the visual language of a religious group
> - the sign language of post-apocalyptic survivors who tried to rebuilt society on the model of an archaic past, maybe in the hope of simplification of political-economic systems and infrastructures  
>
> 6) a guillotine
> - The bunker on whose wall this has been painted might have been a site of a tribunal or in-group jurisdiction, by one one of the actors mentioned before (criminal groups, militias, survivors, subcultures, etc.)
> - It also might reflect of the global armed conflicts before Pernis, and the local conflicts after.
> - Alternatively, it might reflect revolutionary penal regimes, given the historical origin of the guillotines in Jacobin France.
>
> From our data and field notes, we cannot reconstruct with safety whether a mural depicting a hand grenade was painted in the same or a different bunker.  The hand grenade may refer to all of the above, or to the World War II origin and history of the bunkers. In any case, it is very obvious (and striking) that the war iconography of all bunker murals we have been able to see, consists of the weapons used in local-scale, regulated and unregulated militant and (para-)military operations, i.e. by militias, criminal gangs, militant ("terrorist") groups as well as regular army infantry. Despite the history and actors behind Pernis, there is no reflection of large-scale warfare by state as well as state-like private actors. This raises, again, the question of whether the mural were painted pre- or past-Pernis, and whether - in the latter case - they are manifestations of conspiracy theories on Pernis.
>  
> 8) pest doctor
>
> This mural depicts a medieval pest doctor wearing a characteristic, beak-shaped mask. The years before Pernis were those of the Covid-19 pandemic, the early 21st century equivalent of the 20th century Spanish flu. The wars in the Middle East directly before and during Pernis also led to a return of contagious diseases which globally spread, helped by the decreased efficacy of antibiotics through increasingly resistent bacteria and a lack of antibiotics R&D after a global deregulation of pharmaceutical industries and increasing profit-orientation of medical research.
>
But just as likely, the image might refer to immediate medical emergencies after the catastrophy, either as a reflection of society being thrown back into pre-modern periods, or a which to combat the medical crisis through a return to pre-modern (respectively, in the 21st century: alternative) medicine. Already pre-Pernis, during the Covid-19 pandemic, this had been a site of major political-ideological conflict in Dutch society.
>
> 9)  highway flyover
>
> W%e d@nk%n d#t dit e##n c&nc!ete r%fertie i& n@ar Kl##nplld%rpl#e%n,
ee#n v%$rm@lig verk@@r$kn@@p##nt e& c&p&l%x ar%%h!t#%nisc\^ strctr in
h#t n@@r&//n v#n Ro&te%d%m, d@t d# v#rb&n_ing v@rm#de
t_ss$n d# tw# vo^m#ige s#nlweg##n in N#d#rl&nd, de A13 en de A2, v#rw%vn m%t h_t v##rmaige kn##pp#nt 13, Rot&%rd#m-O%$rs&cie,
d@t t\~#n ee# onaf###ank%lijk%
ove##r$t*p w&s, w@r#y j# k#rte t#m# d% s###lweg mo#st v#rla#en. Klinp$l//derple!n
w@#s o#k d% lo&&tie v@n e%n p#st-ap$c$lypt#\$% eco!!l#g!e,
g&insta##%eerd d#r de i# R#tterd\^m g##vest#gde k%nste#@rs en
ontw&p-gr@@p Obs\^\^vator@@m.
>
> Ob$@rt&ri#um st%lde v@#r om h@t m###t#rwe#gkn@@pp#nt om te to###e^ren t#t ee##n p#rk en in$t@lle#rde
tw\$\$ vi%d##ct@n v#@r v#@tgang#rs e##n f@ts#rs, s@m#n m\^t e#n r!st##r
v@@n v##tst##kken in e##n w&terb@rg\^ngs!!b#kken @ls
t#n$ons##ll!ngsru#m@ v#@r be#lh$\^wk\*nst.
>
T\^r$gk!!k^nd m#%t d@z# pl#k w@r#d&n gew###rd##rd als ee^n v@si#n@r exp@r#m$nt
v@n e#n
post-m&ns#$lijk@, p#st-ap$c$l#pt!s##ch@ eco?log!!e. H#t r%^pt d# v##@g o# of d# muur$ch@ld#r
v%rbo#d\*n w@s m@t O%s$rva!!r!!m, @f Kl##npold@rpl$#n - w@arv%n d%
str%ct#r@n w%r#n in\$st#rt n# d# n#slee# v@n P#rn#s - z@g #ls e#n
v@#rt#k&n.
>
> [...]
> 16) suburban map
>
> This mural resembles an aerial map of a Dutch pre-war "Bloemkool" ("cauliflower") or "Vinex" (refering to the Dutch "Vierde Nota Ruimtelijke Ordening Extra", "Fourth Nota Spatial Planning Extra" from 1991) neighborhood.  
>
> To speculate on its meaning:
> - It could be the reflection of a stable order that has collapsed, as nostalgia or cultural memory.
>  - It could also have been painted pre-Pernis as either longing for this order, and stable life, by a a person who had been excluded from it; or as a critique of that order by someone who looked for an alternative lifestyle in the bunker.
>  - It could also serve as a memorial and message to restore the pre-war order in the future.
>
> 17)  video surveillance camera
> This depicts a surveillance camera as it had been (and still is) typically installed in public spaces, in front of prison buildings, military complexes, etc.  Since it seems to be in the same bunker as the suburban aerial map, it might
> - refer to control and repression inherent in the pre-war society, respectively the measures and regimes used to keep its order intact and regulate their public space;
> - refer to such installations in front of, or near, the bunkers themselves;
> - intended serve as camouflage or a warning sign to potential intruders, or as part of symbolic arsenal of, and symbolic order installed by, the group inhabiting and controlling the bunker.
>
> 18)  horse drowning in the sea
> [...]