Flag of the 21st Century Maroon Colony by ¥ego $.V. / August 31
Since we started using the 21MC flag as our main logo a year ago this month, we’ve had a number of people come to us asking what the origins of the flag actually were. So, in honor of West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn, NY tomorrow, I wanted to write a bit about what the flag symbolizes to us at 21MC.
The flag was created from a wide range of influences, but was primarily based off two things: one being the hours upon hours spent staring at African flags (as well as the many flags of the Caribbean I had hanging over my desk in San Francisco). The second major influence on the design of the flag was the “21MC 7 Color Theory“, our exclusive system of Afro-Eyez’d * (see footnote) color theory that we use to determine color selection and hierarchy. The particular 7 colors we used in the 21MC flag are drawn from our conceptual vision of what “the universal colors of the tropics” could/would be. (We’ll discuss the 21MC 7 Color Theory more extensively at a later date)
Anyhow, I was amazed by how much visual unity is displayed when you look at all the flags of Africa and/or the West Indies together, how they are part of one family, even if in actuality there are many divides which keep Black people all over the world separated from ourselves (physically, mentally, socially, aesthetically, etc) for one reason or another. Also, these colors are found in the U.$., though not a tropical country, a country where descendants of tropical people now live and who have retained much of their visual tropical roots (as they say, “loud, bright colors that we wear”: church hats, mardi gras costumes, hip-hop streetwear, the so-called pimp suit, etc). So, last year we set out to create a flag that could embody what could be called the legacy of Black design (at least partially).
As a result and as our name suggests, we use this flag to represent us as we are forming temporary autonomous maroon colonies in hostile nations, UK, U$A, France, etc (please remember this is true regardless of the destiny of Barack Obama). We use this flag to represent us as 21st Century 2/3s World people living in the belly of the beast and back in the tropics: Black, Indigenous, Latino, and Asian. We use this flag to represent us as modern maroons trying carve out a safe place for the development of our post-colonial culture (Art/Design, Thought, Music, Spirit, and Politics). We use this flag to represent us as sideways-culture-hacking-attackers of the mainstream. We use this flag to represent us as tropical ethno-digital guerrillas in the urban bush. This flag of 21MC is our symbol of past, present, future: those that walked before and those who will walk.
Tomorrow as we presently walk down Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, NY at the West Indian Day Parade, we will use this flag to represent us.
*Afro-Eyez’d (pronounced Afroized)
A 21MC term we’ve developed out of necessity to describe the use of Afrikan/Afro-Amerikan experiences and aesthetics as the major source of influence in our approach to what visual communication means in the 21st century in relation to Black people and People of Color in general. This approach is not used in mere blind reaction to European design ideas (90% of design is Euro-centric), but as a sort of visual patois Black people can use to better express themselves and their experiences. On our most indulgent days, we see the Afro-Eyez’d approach to design to be a visual answer/solution equal to the concept of “Nation Language” and the use of patois in West Indian poetry (See Kamau Brathwaite’s History of the Voice) or Aime Cesaire’s ideas on Afro-Surrealism and imagined self (Discourse on Colonialism).
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