Feel this place. Start with your feet. Kneel down to the earth. Lie down. Notice the center your instinct, the gut. Listen deeply for the stories of those who have lived, sweat, toiled, eaten, celebrated, cried, hoped, loved, fought and died here. Crawl, roll or move with the earth when it feels right. This is a practice of unlearning. It is one method for loving this place. This essay is a work in progress searching for artistic protocols to decolonize.

I am writing from the archipelago inhabited by descendents of Uchina, Ainu, Silla, Heike and other diverse peoples now known as “Japan.” In the past there were tribes, clans, and communities that called themselves Nakoku (Country of “Na” in Hakata), the Ryūkyū Kingdom and other sovereign regions. I acknowledge the multiplicities of this place to open multivalent definitions of culture, anti-hegemonic ways of being, and nurture survivance as a way of remaining nearby in ____. Fill in the blank with Singapore, or the place where you are reading this now.

In the opening lines of Faisal Tehrani’s novel 1515, Nyemah Mulya comes back from five centuries ago to ask a history professor today, “How would it be if we work together to change history?” Layers of the past opened respectfully with protocols sensitive to the place(s) we are in carry the ability to change history. Relearning what is nearby and how it has been impacted by faraway places is one way we can actively work “on decolonial time.”¹ The proposition of this show faraway nearby as a title chosen collaboratively chosen by the artists themselves might be to work with what is near, while rethinking our relationship to what is faraway, a bright proposition indeed. 

Working with the artists of this exhibition, I held a workshop “Talk Story with Dirt” inside of the earth in the basement studios². This gathering was held when meeting face-to-face embodied the kind of precarity of visiting a newborn in the hospital. I would like to share something I wrote before and after our workshop here in the spirit of nurturing artist-on-artist friendships.

Protocols for artists working with land (a work in progress):

1. respectfully touch land near you

2. listen to its stories as you would listen to a close friend

3. open conversation/s with those who have come before you

4. acknowledge the indigenous roots where you are

5. learn more about your own family roots, language, songs, culture/s, poems and...

6. think creatively in dialogue with members of your community/communities 

7. feel the shapes present within yourself, the land and the ancestors

8. create with what is already there, bring in as little as possible from the outside

9. check in with elders at key junctures and heed their advice

10. share what is mutually agreed upon as shareable

11. respect what is not meant to be public by keeping it between yourself and those who have entrusted you with it

12. at any stage of the work, if something feels wrong in your gut, stop and reflect
    

These are some of the protocols I operate with in my artworks. They are informed by teachers, cultural practitioners, elders, ancestors, friends and community members who have generously shared with me as an artist deeply concerned with caring for the land. Lawyer, professor and cultural practitioner Malia Akutagawa taught me, “we all live on one island, island earth.” Living on one island shapes our responsibility, awareness and actions while remembering that all we do affects others. Search with your hands, heart, mind and feet. Your protocols are living within you and all the roots that have brought you here. As you find them, cherish them, they matter to you as an artist and all those who you and your work touch.

Expansive ways of knowing float in the spirits of each artist in faraway nearby. This knowledge is informed by indigenous ways of being. Adrian Lahoud reminds us, “ancestors must be called upon before we can commune with them,” ³ and once we do reunite with them, they share gifts for those who are ready to receive and care for them. Ancestors tell us how to live more intimately, justly and harmoniously with places nearby. The artists in faraway nearby are letting go of control, relying on the weather, immersing in environment(s), feeling the presence of ghosts in Windstedt, remembering what is unspoken, resting when needed, opening spaces inside of ourselves and trying to understand uncontrolled structures. Perhaps the ecological relationships between near and far have become more visible to us at times during the pandemic, yet they always remain interconnected, even as activity speeds up now.

Partnerships afar blossomed during the pandemic while nearby relations were distanced, as a slice from Moten and Harney’s conversation while at a distance, “We are apart but with others, elaborating on our partnership through others and coming together in different configurations. We want to hold each other, as our friend Fumi Okiji says, "without holding each other to anything." That's our thing.”⁴ Let’s embrace each other and all we have learned during this pandemic as an opportunity to exist slowly together while near and far.

While they are not yet complete, I share these thoughts and artist protocols in progress while on a slow ferry boat in Setouchi in hopes to spawn sensitive artistic methods in each of us. The impact of our care matters not only for ourselves, but for all those who will continue the work as Esther Vincent notes, “To become indigenous to land is to care for the land, to nurture and cultivate it so that it looks after our children long after our children long after we are gone.” ⁵ The time for change is nearby now. Lose track of colonial time and space. Regain a sense of land time and space. Carrying this care forward in all that lies ahead. May we remain near while far and the spaces we co-create for reflection continue long after this period of contagion.

Notes

¹ Hoyer, Jen and Nora Almeida. The Social Movement Archive. (New York: Litwin Books, 2021): 40.

²  These protocols in progress were written while on the bus to the workshop “held together” at LASALLE with MA students on 16 September 2021 and edited minimally afterwards in early 2022 while writing this essay.

³ Lahoud, Adrian. “Signs and Transmissions: Decolonising the Architecture Exhibition,” Sharjah Architecture Triennale, 14 March 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhHCXx_F4rQ

⁴ Ngin, Zach, Sarah Van Horn, Alex Westfall. “When We Are Apart We Are Not Alone: A conversation with Fred Moten and Stefano Harney,” 1 May 2020: https://www.theindy.org/2017 

⁵ Vincent, Esther. “The Field” in Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2021): 32.

James Jack 
Artist
Associate Professor
Intermedia Art
Waseda University