Desires pending

Trembling Aspen | Series 04_My Life Here | Issue_14

There I was, doing straight up Traditional Chinese Medicine exercises, tapping on meridians, moving bad energy out of my body and into Mother Earth with a bunch of Japanese business people in a big shiny office tower in downtown Tokyo. What even is happening right now? 

Later (in the same workshop) we all find ourselves sharing what needs we currently have—meaning, acceptance, empathy, play, beauty, inspiration, love, respect, etc.  Is this really happening in Japan? A place where—it’s commonly believed—people won’t participate in this kind of self revelation. Yes, yes it is. But we aren't done yet! The next round is sharing what we desire. "Don’t share what you are suppose to desire," the facilitator is saying, "share what you desire." Uh...even this dyed in the wool Westerner is squirming a bit at that one. (Again, is this happening in Japan? Yes, yes it is.) 

A few months ago it felt uncomfortably ambitious to say My participatory art project is working toward the self-sovereignty of the Ooka River. Yesterday, in the afore mentioned workshop, I found myself saying My desire is to initiate a bioregional regeneration initiative centred on the Ooka River. 

What. Am. I. Even. Saying. Out. Loud. Right. Now?!

All you need to know about a bioregional regeneration initiative is that it's impossibly, stupidly, out-of-reaching-ly bigger than the self-sovereignty of the Ooka River. Or, for that matter, anything I—flying at 30,000 feet as I am prone to do—might conceive of. And yet, I keep moving toward it and remain strangely calm.

It's not that I can (or want to) carry out a bioregional regeneration effort. It's just that it's starting to make the most sense as the thing to be working toward. If a bioregional regeneration effort is a massive trembling aspen grove, I'm still working on the scale of small KocoGarden-sized saplings. I'm still doing all the same stuff—Solarpunk Conversations, etc.—it's just that I've been working on understanding what a massive trembling aspen grove might look like, so as to guide which saplings to work with.

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Earlier in the week I started a mind map on the wall of KocoGarden. The mind map and bioregional regeneration were fresh on my mind as I headed off to the shiny towers in Tokyo. And so, I found myself blurting out "My desire is to initiate a bioregional regeneration initiative centred on the Ooka River" to a roomful of complete strangers.

Anyway, as a result of saying what I desire, I’ll be speaking at BioClub Tokyo, and the architect/hackerspace activist who runs said club, along with an entrepreneur from Thailand, and a systems engineer from Keio University are coming down to Yokohama next week to hang out, talk and scheme about all this stuff… So, yeah, I need to go to more of these shiny tower things. 

And apparently I need to say what I desire more often. At least, I need to do so in the context of a group of people with whom I’ve shared some none-of-us-is-perfectly-comfortable-with-this moments. Those people want to help you get what you desire. It’s a bit magical really. 

Hey, I’m Steve, an artist-in-residence in Yokohama, Japan. I make collaborative art, participatory art, interactive new media installations, and abstract visual art. I explore themes of home, identity, belonging and how to live your life like a work of art. I write about it all in this very newsletter, Trembling Aspen.

Art at the intersection of systems change.
I’m learning out loud so we can learn together.

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