The title "Tabula 404" is a combination of the Latin phrase "Tabula Rasa" and "Error 404," which indicates a missing page on the internet.I spent the first half of 2023 in Thailand. I was struck by how nature leaves no chance for anything human-made. The tropical climate quickly deteriorates anything not regularly maintained, and vegetation engulfs ruins.
Along the roads, you often see empty billboards, their ads ripped off by the wind, washed away by tropical rains, or faded by the sun. Billboards symbolize our consumer era, always urging us to buy a better life and better emotions. Yet, all this is insignificant in the face of nature, including human nature. It is all so temporary and trivial.
In our time, when a person's mind is free from consumerist values, like a tabula rasa, it is often seen as an error, lack of ambition, desire, narrow-mindedness, and fear of failure. But is it really so? I believe that human nature, like the nature of Thailand's islands, can cleanse our minds of unnecessary, imposed clutter.
