Edward Said’s groundbreaking work Orientalism and the discourses that have emerged since its publication have had a direct impact on the way we work, and interpret our projects. We proposed to re-write the text at a Design Inquiry residency that took place in the UK in 2018. During the residency, we used a custom-designed algorithm to sort and re-sort, re-order, and re-search the text for phrases, sentiments, and other curious combinations.
During our research, we discovered that a simple anti-alphabetical organization of the text was the most elegant and insightful solution. The earliest examples of alphabetical order come from scribes writing in the indigenous languages of the Levant (a word that comes from الْمَشْرق “the east, where the sun rises”).
Orientalism Z to A is simply a re-ordering of Said’s original text, in the original publication 8vo format. We removed certain hyphenated words, chapter headings, and footnote numbers. There are some lovely moments in the book, we have our favorite bits, but hope that you can find some surprises for yourself. - Water with Water
