Cyprus, and the Secret Agents Who Carry a Plaque

The 5=3 project has never really been a solo project, even though I make every plaque myself. From very early on, friends started offering to carry a plaque with them when they travelled — to take it somewhere I couldn't get to myself, and place it quietly, on my behalf.

Cyprus, in October 2025, is one of the clearest examples of how that works in practice. A friend carried the plaque there, found a spot, and put it up — and by the time I saw the photos, the project had quietly grown by one more country without me ever booking a flight.

The 5=3 project lives thanks to the support of friends. My friends take the plaques with them on their travels and, like secret agents, go on a mission. I usually find the location in advance, and once they're there, we adapt to the surroundings together.

That's genuinely how it works: I'll often have a rough idea of where a plaque should go before it even leaves my hands, but the final decision happens on the ground, between whoever's carrying it and whatever wall, step, or corner they actually find when they get there. It's a small, ongoing act of trust, repeated every time — someone agrees to be my hands in a city I'm not in.

Carrying a plaque for someone else and asking me to make one from your own numbers are, I've realized, two different kinds of trust placed in the same project — one lends its hands to a story that isn't its own; the other hands me a story and asks me to shape it into something a stranger can read on a wall. Neither happens because I ask directly. Both happen because someone decides, quietly, on their own, that this is worth showing up for. If you'd ever want to be one of those secret agents yourself, there are quieter ways to help carry or host a plaque too.

It's really hard to talk about the topic of loss, and even harder to act on it in public, on a wall, in a country you don't live in. I'm lucky to be surrounded by people willing to do exactly that — quietly, without asking for credit, like secret agents on a mission that matters more than either of us usually says out loud.