RUEN
THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS
Label: RUEN
Releasedatum: 15-09-2026
Herkomst: NL
Item-nr: 4936571
EAN:
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Recensie
The Tragedy of the Commons is an album about land theft and sovereignty. It is written in 2026, a time when we see the genocide in Palestine unfolding on everyone’s screens, extractivism killing humans and non-humans in places like Congo, Colombia, and Peru. We see with our own eyes wildfires devouring our landscapes, and feel in our bodies the temperatures rise. The apocalypse is not coming, it is already here. Dare to even say that it has always been on the horizon, the shadow cast by the state and capitalism.
This record is loosely based on the book When the Wolves Howl (Quando os Lobos Uivam, 1958) by Aquilino Ribeiro, a (not so) fictional story about a group of villages in the north of Portugal fighting for their access to the common land (baldios) in the mountains, while the regime wants to fence it off and plant pine trees. 70 years later, we see similar land grabs in Covas do Barroso, where old stories repeat themselves and the state takes common lands by force to dig for lithium.
We wanted to dive deeper into the subjects of the enclosures, the eradication of common lands, and their effects on society. We found inspiration in the work of Silvia Federici, Peter Gelderloos, The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes, among many others. Squatting, collectivising land, getting social centres out of the market — all ways to negate and make new commons of sorts. And we will need those in the time to come.
The spells of capitalism, the cop in our head, the fence, borders, productivity culture, gender roles — we carry them within us. This record is an attempt to break these spells and to sit in the discomfort of experimentation, in the knowing that the world we want to build will never be perfect, but it will be ours.
This record is loosely based on the book When the Wolves Howl (Quando os Lobos Uivam, 1958) by Aquilino Ribeiro, a (not so) fictional story about a group of villages in the north of Portugal fighting for their access to the common land (baldios) in the mountains, while the regime wants to fence it off and plant pine trees. 70 years later, we see similar land grabs in Covas do Barroso, where old stories repeat themselves and the state takes common lands by force to dig for lithium.
We wanted to dive deeper into the subjects of the enclosures, the eradication of common lands, and their effects on society. We found inspiration in the work of Silvia Federici, Peter Gelderloos, The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes, among many others. Squatting, collectivising land, getting social centres out of the market — all ways to negate and make new commons of sorts. And we will need those in the time to come.
The spells of capitalism, the cop in our head, the fence, borders, productivity culture, gender roles — we carry them within us. This record is an attempt to break these spells and to sit in the discomfort of experimentation, in the knowing that the world we want to build will never be perfect, but it will be ours.
