In the early 1990s, we witnessed the aftermath of the socialist East’s failure of the idea of common property: cooperative land was returned to its original owners. This process was framed as restoring the legal rights of those from whom the 1950s land reforms had confiscated property. Back then, reformists aimed to redistribute land and provide opportunities for everyone, attempting to transform society and teach people to share resources and property collectively.
In the post-socialist East, we are now observing a new form of redistribution: banks and corporations reclaim land from individuals through mechanisms of lending and debt. Land and its distribution can signify currency, capital, reform, or poverty, depending on the geographical, historical, and socio-political context.
Some years ago, in Venezuela, land was redistributed to poorer communities to enable them to start small, self-sufficient farms. They used analog VHS tape to mark boundaries and create smaller, irregular plots for individual families. Through this archaic gesture, they enacted a new social reality, delineating space with a seemingly obsolete product of technological society and giving it a renewed purpose.