The concept of "cultural soil" and what it holds for living in a changed world

One of the most delusional beliefs, as our lives slowly change due to massive climate shifts, is that living in dissonance with the environmental, social, and ecological context is not only desirable but also objectively more civilized and advanced. We prioritize individual comfort over shared well-being. We romanticize nature as a source of inspiration rather than a guiding force for cultivating better relationships. This reduces aesthetics into stylistic attributes that can be transferred from one place to another. Culture is flattened into object fetishization, ritual is turned into routine, and identity is confused with ideology. The belief that we can re-create the environment makes colonizing another planet feel like a plausible and justifiable future.

In the world of Scavengers Reign, a story that begins with a spaceship crew shuttling between planets, they are trapped on a distant planet with no rescue, where they find themselves in a lively and wondrous ecosystem where things can either kill or save them. None of the creatures living on this planet is inherently evil, but they have the potential to be lethal if you don't understand them (like life on Earth). Scattered, each crew member developed their own strategies to cope. From forming unlikely alliances to becoming a parasite, the animated series presents a compelling account of what living under climate change feels like: no help is underway, those we feel are most responsible for the disasters will never be held accountable, and circumstances render a return to “normal” increasingly unlikely—if not impossible. Yet, how one chooses to respond changes the trajectory of survival. The audience is dropped into the middle of this unfurling story, with little explanation at first. We, as audiences, make sense of the beauty and cruelty of this world as the characters experience it. To some degree, I think living under uncertainty means being dropped into situations with which we have no prior experience. Unlike the comfort of knowing that we are watching fiction, in real life, we are ill-equipped to make sense of it. There's no practice ground, there's no rehearsal.

It wasn't always like this.

Cultures have always emerged from a relationship to place, constraints, and environmental contexts. Preserving culture by restoring it to a former, idealized state means suspending it from the present moment or its aliveness. If massive changes shape the future and there are no clear instructions on how to respond, a culture that prioritizes comfort, safety, and routine will struggle to adapt. Property insurance only works when a disaster remains a chance event. It is a product of believing in a future. With climate change, many properties in high-risk areas have quietly become uninsurable. Rich people can diversify their high-risk real estate assets with low-risk ones, but ordinary people will face a denied claim on top of losing their homes. Sitting and waiting for a chance event to happen and expecting it to be handled by an insurance company requires little effort, yet in this climate, it's too good to be true. Cultivating a safety net requires long-term and sustained efforts. Culture used to be this safety net—festivals and feasts not only served as celebrations and temporary releases from duties and production, but also as gatherings of the entire community. Rather than being mandated by arbitrary rules, the cosmological ties and otherworldly qualities of ritual spaces provide a contextual backdrop that is larger-than-life, where participation is bound to a place, a set of actions, and a shared meaning.

Culturally specific art forms emerge from this specificity. Tea ceremonies in Southern China differ significantly from those in Japan, not only due to their stylistic differences, but also because of the set of actions that reflects distinct cosmologies, thereby constructing different ritual spaces. This development of taste marks an attention to place. Tea grown in Southern China is destined to taste different from tea grown in Japan, despite being the same plant. The art of the tea ceremony emerges with the soil, or terroir, from which the tea was grown, even though many believe that the “art” part begins when you enter the tea room. The tea room is where everything comes together, a microcosm in itself, an appreciation of which requires an understanding of the countless asynchronous decisions that made this exact moment possible, as well as the myriad coincidences that contributed to its unfolding. The tea ceremony is a scaled-down version of a gathering, a festival in its smallest form. It is in direct contradiction with the narrative that artists are at the centre of their works. It is, however, coherent with the environmental, social, and ecological contexts raised previously. If this is true, then the way we experience tea ceremonies as exact replicas of what would have happened in Southern China or Japan is inconsistent with the cultural emergence of this art form. Cultural tradition is then reduced to nostalgia and mimicked through industrial uniformity—a performed culture that does not adapt to new contexts as it travels from place to place. Under climate change, perhaps this "travel" also means that the environmental context changes as if a rug is pulled from under our feet. We would stay standing still, and yet, the ground shifted.

Some believe that the response to climate and environmental damages entails restoring the environment to its former state, and technology is the means to achieve this. Others are forced into adaptation, while the prospect of returning to normal diminishes over time, as seen in the crew members of Scavengers Reign. When discussing technology, industrial and digital technologies often take center stage. Even though the format of immersive experiences and their promise of leveraging technology to create an engaging experience for audiences emphasize storytelling through various forms of technology, the notion of technology remains confined to screens, digital software and hardware, and AI. Culture is not often considered a form of technology, as cultural traditions are usually practiced in tribute to a former state of the world that no longer exists. 

Japanese designer, Kenay Hara, speaks of “cultural soil”—the slow cultivation of appreciation and taste that allowed Japanese design to take on its own flavour during an influx of imported aesthetics and cultural artifacts under globalized trade. Investing in cultural soil is different from how Canada currently invests in arts and culture. One nourishes a way of living where beauty is ordinary. The other isolates arts and culture through identity, heritage, diplomacy, and now social impact. To each of their own, the approaches shape how artists practice and how culture proliferates in society.

The question of cultural soil invites us to reconsider what culture is and, by extension, how to engage with culture as a form of technology. 

Necessity underpins many cultural practices and culturally specific art forms. When we shift our social orientation towards the excess and accumulation of surplus, the practice changes, and we no longer live coherently with the world around us. This accumulation is cultural indigestion. Gluttony. Or, wanting and hoarding more than what is needed. Cultural spending becomes a matter of getting our money’s worth. Let’s say that if we want to “get our money’s worth” when it comes to cultural funding, then we must first have an idea of what “worth” looks like. If anything other than putting money into an investment asset is a waste, then “worth” inevitably directs attention to art as a financial instrument. Beauty then becomes a display of financial investment. However, when we treated art, design, and culture as an integral part of living—relational practices embedded in community and environment—we would restructure the entire sector that has been shaped by art being viewed as a surplus, an asset, a proxy for wealth. Artists would no longer offer their crafts and skills to galleries, platforms, presenters, or private collectors. Instead, they are responsible for navigating the edges of communities and ecologies, gathering, translating, and prototyping ways of living that offer coherence and integrity in the rapidly changing world. Art, then, becomes a testing ground for necessary reconfigurations, perhaps a rehearsal of how to be in better relationships with the world we live in.

Cultivating cultural soil is a process of digesting what is being consumed and distributing the excess. Cultural technology extends beyond questions of what art is or what it can do to address societal and environmental issues. It calls for a reevaluation of what it means to live coherently with the environment we inhabit.

In Kenya Hara’s case study, this cultural soil yields substantial financial success and recognition for MUJI, organized under the design language of (approximately) "this is enough." I’m curious about what emerges from this cultural soil when situated within the Canadian context, one that feels temporary and uncommitted. What is the answer to the problematic cultural mosaic that demands everyone to be cut into same-sized squares of different colours?

Where the conversation shifted from art and art money in this dispatch, it is a conversation that cascades into exploring themes such as who will invest in art (as prototypes to a good life), the role of arts organizations and artists, and how art forms must change in response to increased volatility. It touches on areas that deserve more attention than the collective cry for funding from arts organizations, which, to be fair, the talk of funding feels like grasping for air when few options exist outside of grants in Canada. I’m curious about what cultivating cultural soil means when, for decades, if not centuries, the priority of institutionalized art has been to be detached (or, elevated) from ordinary life.

With this week’s dispatch, I have a few things to update. 

Here's an early preview of Cultural Technologies Lab. As I step into the director role at UKAI Projects, I'm acclimating myself to broader responsibilities, including setting the strategic direction of the entity and shaping the various conditions that can sustain this work. I’d be delighted to hear your thoughts and explore how the work of the Cultural Technologies Lab might be mutually beneficial to other initiatives addressing the cascading impacts of climate change.

I will be in Hsinchu, Taiwan, to research and prototype formats for documenting and disseminating examples of cultural technologies during a six-month residency at Artsite Hsinchu, supported by the Hsinchu City Cultural Bureau, alongside numerous cultural producers in Taiwan. I’m also exploring how to adapt Goblin Market to local contexts in Hsinchu, starting with a site exploration and analysis of General Village, a former military residential cluster that has been transformed into a hub for cultural and community activities. This also means that Goblin Market will likely see another iteration, where its format will be tested against a set of new cultural norms, languages, and relationships to place.

Here's a blog post upon searching up the place on the internet: