ZAUM

Zaum is an experimental language co-invented by Velimir Khlebnikov and extensively used in his 1922 play Zangezi, which was restaged in Weimar and Munich this past September 2025.

Zaum is  a “beyondsense” system of invented neologisms made of non-referential phonetic expressions and rhythms that mean nothing but are charged with infinite poetic possibilities. Zaum contains its own ontology as a self-proclaimed transrational anti-language.

In Khlebnikov’s Zangezi, the prophet, the birds, the stars, and the gods communicate through Zaum invocations:

Na-no-na!
Echee, oochee, ochee
Kezze, nézee, dzee-ga-ga!
Neezaréezee ozeerée
Mayahmoora zeemoró!
Peeps!
Mazacheecheemoro!
Plyan!

Zaum is to be found when the languages of Man end in misunderstandings, chaos, and wars—where language becomes weapon.

In Zangezi’s Plane 7, WAR: …Describe the horrors of our age in the words of Alphabet! So that never again will we have to see war between peoples, the sabers of Alphabet; instead let us hear the crash of Alphabet’s long spears…

If language is the means to convey the good as easily as the bad, so is design. In today’s world, the modalities of language and design are interdependent. Our world of overconsumption and fear of the other is engineered by design and can only be overcome by design.

Up to 7,000 different languages are spoken around the world. 90% of these are used by less than 100,000 people. The same might be said for design styles. And yet design also responds to factors that are universally shared as it was applied by the International Style movement  and is today applied by massively distributed apps.

Now that we have evolved into homotechnologicus, it might be said that we could imagine 10 billion sorts of design expectations, that is a design that is individually generated and no longer mass-distributed; a design that is formed by individual pre-sets and no longer pre-formatted.

The question is then whether this design “language” could only be technological or if it could remain rooted in the organic nature of humanity’s being.

Learning from Khlebnikov complex theories, Zaum can be seen as an opportunity to deeply explore the symbolic nature and materiality of design structures and forms.