Curated by Dani Brito

Produced by Adriana Ega

If you look up the etymology for the term "guerrilla," you will find that it derives from the Spanish word guerra, meaning war. Guerrilla fighters refer to the decentralized factions or bodies of skirmishers that tend to be at the frontlines of revolutionary struggles globally, from post-colonial battles to socialist uprisings. In the twentieth century, the phrase began to be used to describe radical movement work and the do-it-yourself ethos found in political cultural production (see guerrilla theater, Guerrilla Girls, guerrilla gardening).

Let's linger here for a moment. I do not typically favor a war metaphor, but when daily wars are waged against immigrants, against the climate, against anyone Other, insurgence has been—and will always be—the only answer. The artists and collectives that comprise Blueprints for Planet Other take matters into their own hands, combating grave conditions with creative strategies for disseminating knowledge, redistributing resources, and tending to the land. Together, they design schematics for fugitivity: riotous sketches for worlds between the margins.

Secret Riso Project, for example, sets forth a prismatic visual language for contemporary movement building by partnering with organizers, artists, and collectives to design books and print ephemera that stylistically recall the kaleidoscopic aesthetics found in mid-twentieth century protest art. Meanwhile, Soft Power Vote’s design interventions recruit those traversing the present digital age. Their glossy, gradient-heavy, and text-driven guides activate civic participation among millennial and Gen-Z audiences by offering tools for political empowerment.

This accessible circulation of knowledge is also a priority for School for Poetic Computation (SFPC). As public schools and libraries face censorship, peer-led schools like SFPC teach the liberatory intersections between technology and critical theory. Their pedagogical model critiques extractive systems under the conditions of late-stage capitalism, building instead towards collective autonomy. Similarly, it’s these calamitous economic structures that Sola Market challenges materially: the itinerant marketplace sustains artists in need, offering affordable art supplies to makers in this moment when material costs are higher than ever.

Turning inward, Risa Puno grounds us in the affective landscapes that the social consequences of marginality incite. Puno draws from the architectures seen in carnival games across “Rage Reflex Wheel”—the work reflects the interiority of Asian women and femmes as they process the disorienting absurdity of racial violence. And finally, zooming out, Bradley Pitts devises renderings for possible environmental futures. The artist’s holistic land stewardship initiative PLaCE (peoples, lands, agriculture, ecologies) pays homage to the living modalities of Indigenous communities. Pitts, with support from the Mohican Nation in upstate New York, proposes the development of interdependent microhabitats along the region, wherein humans will co-habitate with native plants and animals.

Together, these socially-charged works are not polished studies, but iterative drafts—transgressive footnotes for the collective imaginary. In this epoch of overlapping global crises, Blueprints for Planet Other offers a constellation of ambitious resistance practices. The featured artists within DEMO’s Cooperative Studies Track threaten dominant rules of relationality across disciplines, placing collectivity at the nexus of stratospheres in the making.