Unknown Fields is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness it has brought into being. Tales from the Dark Side of the City is a series that forms an atlas to the territories and stories of a city that stretches across the entire planet. Sitting between documentary and fiction, this is a city of dislocated sites, of drone footage and hidden-camera investigations, of interviews and speculative narratives, of toxic objects and distributed matter from distant grounds. These books are a collection of tales from the constellation of elsewheres that are conjured into being by the city’s wants and needs, fears and dreams.

In Treasured Island Unknown Fields travel through Madagascar to meet the illegal traders of the world’s luxury brands. Madagascar was once home to a community of anarchist pirates: an island beyond the law and off the map. This book unravels the contemporary black market supply chain that strings together precious gem stones from the mining towns of Madagascar to adorn the celebrity necklines and trembling newlywed fingers of the metropolis. One of the planet’s most precious ecological treasures is home to one of its poorest nations: in the shadows of the world’s desires we uncover some of the complex value negotiations that play out across this island.

9781907896873, 2016
24 × 17cm, illustrated, 64pp, paperback