This exhibition was presented at SITE EIGHT Gallery, RMIT, on 4–5 June 2026, for the examination of my PhD, Being Keepers: Line Language as Survival Methodology.
The research began with a rupture: the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, which shattered environment, society and language simultaneously. What followed was over a decade of inhabiting the Unspeakable. At its core is the life force: the autonomous, pulsating energy that precedes institutional validation. Line Language, a pre-verbal grammar drawn from Ikebana and Japanese vernacular knowledge and grounded in Ma, the breathable interval, became a Survival Methodology: a way to remain with harm, and to keep existing where the system would erase.
Through this practice, Kekkai emerge: imaginative clearings where Ma opens across space, time and the inner self. To weave one’s own Kekkai is the most fundamental, ecosophical form of activism. In doing so, the research moves from seeking institutional validation to becoming a Being Keeper of one’s own truth: a quiet custodian of a slightly messy sanctuary where the life force is allowed to exist unobserved, stubborn, relational, agentic, and filled with a quiet, secret joy.
