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A burial without a grave

(Le fond de l'air est orange)

Frontliners as grave liners

A front-liner is a container used in rituals of decomposition to prevent revolt from seeping underground and meeting with subterranean currents, which are responsible for the unexpected sinkholes that collapse the ground beneath your feet. Over time, a State will decay, and with that decay, the terrain around the State will shift and resettle. By surrounding the State with a reinforced civic barrier, when decay does inevitably occur, the constituency around it will remain undisturbed. By preventing constituencies from caving in on themselves, the front-liners ensure that “the front lines” or “the battle ground” remains level and State forces who visit need not worry about falling, twisting ankles, or otherwise injuring themselves due to uneven ground. Secondly, by keeping the ground level, performing routine maintenance on the property is simpler, which keeps costs down for both the State and corporations. And finally, if the ground were to settle and shift substantially, critical infrastructure, key players, and institutions may shift and tip. If this happens, the revolt must be squashed, which also raises the cost of maintenance of order, and business as usual.

A front-liner partially encloses the revolt but only offers minimal protection from the elements. Because it is completely exposed, cops, rightists, centrists, liberals, populists, communists and other wingnuts can make their way inside over time. Though they typically make of shields out of plywood, plastic and metal are also used as well. They are not water, but aim to be a concrete wall, lining the front, containing the revolt framed within this simplistic geometry delineated by riot police formations. While it offers the cops some resistance, it doesn’t prevent cops or the far-right from running over them, or the State from settling or caving in on itself.

A body without organs, ritualistically embalmed, not with myrrh or embalming fluids, but with tear gas and pepper spray, and then buried. They chant “they tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds” but the only thing that’s being put into the ground is mummified toxic remains. The intention is that other forms of life cannot feed from the decay, while trying to preserve the image of the deceased as they once were. Green and natural burials do not require the use of grave liners. The main idea behind green and natural burials is to allow the decomposition process to occur naturally. Green burial excludes any type of embalming, and the cemetery grounds are maintained without the use of herbicides, pesticides, or irrigation. Front-liners are the container keeping the body of the social together, instead of dismembering it and feeding it to the birds, like in a sky burial. Street protests are the graveyard of lost causes, where the memory of past front-liners are buried, out of sight.