Cosmopolemos is an exploration of knowledge and meaning in relation to an overwhelming edifice of power. America spends as much on its defence as the next nine countries put together each year, accounting for 40% of military spending worldwide. $6.5 trillion worth of contracts were issued by the U.S. Department of Defense between the attacks of 9/11 and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. The items accounted for between these two iconic events encompass every aspect of life and death – from oil reserves and nuclear weapons to cookies and cleaning services: over 43 million recorded transactions, with contractors large and small. These corporate relationships underpin the hegemony of the world’s foremost superpower in 2026, the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. They aren’t secret. But their scale and complexity challenges understanding.

Visual artist Edmund Clark and investigative reporter Crofton Black decided to interrogate this complexity using a traditional form, now often seen as redundant: the printed Encyclopaedia. For centuries, humans have grappled with their imperfect knowledge  of the universe using this form to portray inconceivable complexity between two covers. Photographic illustration is provided by the Department of Defense’s photo gallery – the images it chooses  to represent itself. Clark and Black provide these images in two contexts, a Gazetteer focussing on countries where activities take place, and a Glossary of words found in both the descriptive field of a transaction and the caption field of an image file. In combining the Department of Defense’s transaction data with its soft-focus photography of American military power, this Encyclopaedia offers a representation of everything the US military paid for everywhere.

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