Before we start into the deeps of the Obscure World Collection, let me make some explanatory remarks.

Imagine another world, one step apart and very familiar to ours, yet slightly shifted. You walk into a deserted ruin, pass a green door (colours vary) or maybe a mirror (you surely remember, Alice?), you might even stay at home and deepen yourself into a book when you suddenly realise objects around you have gained a kind of surreal touch. There you are, in a world of inventigious vehicles, amazing architecture and obscure customs. It’s called the Obscure World. Jules Verne would have liked it.
While strolling through familiar streets you suddenly realise the facades you see are nothing more then paper-thin decorations. What if the whole city is merely a mask?
You walk further and look!— a house you clearly remember on one side of the street has moved to the opposite, making room for some new development. They say the new is necessary to keep one’s position in an inter-city race — you cannot recall having agreed to compete.
You pass a hoarding and suddenly step into a print office. Newspaper bundles lay on the transporter band ready for delivery, printing machines stand at their places, yet the glass roof isn’t intact no more and grass spreading through the pavement tiles tells you the last man has shut the door leaving ages ago.
You are lost in a glass house complex, where dark corridors end at “Closed for…” signs instead of leading you to further displays. What is there, behind the closed door? A bigger maze, maybe?
In a disused pump station forgotten heroes of the aeras past suddenly appear in the undergoing sun… What if the station tubes are still being used for some unclear purposes?
Returning to your bookshelf you scroll fusty newspages and come along inventive proposals that would have changed the world — be it the draining of the Mediterranean or the flying velocipede. What if all these would have been given a chance?

In the Obscure World, they’ve had one. Here architects are mighty to re-build whole cities according to their ideas. Developers find risk-willing descision-makers. Scientists get brilliant ideas and realise them emitting enormous smoke clouds. Adventurers break out into the deepest jungle and return discovering at least an unknown civilization…

An utopia 1900 A.D., plus-minus 30 years.

First made accessible in the June 1982 (A Suivre) issue, when The Walls of Samaris (Les Murailles de Samaris) by belgian artists François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters appeared. They were pioneers to admit in public they’ve been to the Obscure World and back. Since then, numerous researchers have magnified our knowledge and helped to play out the Authorities’ attempts to classify the story as a hoax. Fans (as they are also known) have proven the trueness of suggested inter-relations by sending their evidencies in, thus immortalizing their names.

As for me, I’ve got a following connection to the Obscure World: during the “Courage for a Hole” seminar I was granted a Brüsel citizenship (pass №176). Collection pieces following below are dedicated to places I consider Passage-worthy…

Left-side mosaics represent locations from the list below

Mundaneum, Mons

Atlantropa

Karl Osthaus Museum, Hagen

St.Petersburg Passages:

Globes collection at the Kunstkammmer museum

Admiralty

Bronse Horseman and Nicolas I.

Carl Bulla

Resurrection Church and Ismaylovski Cathedral

Berlin Passages:

Museums’ Island and Lapidarium

Preparatory Board of the 3^rd Obscure Convention

Series jubilee presents

Obscure Passports, 5 pieces, for 5 Obscure Cities

East Prussian Passages:

Trakehnen Network