de-presencing

​
​
2023-2026

​"For the ten-thousandth death to be the one of refusal, refusal to be present, to strive, to engage, to create, to progress.

A spectral form will remain."
​
​

De-presencing is a practice for everyone, it is not something I own or seek to expand in a meaningful sense as a "work" or my "work".  In fact, it is something I insist we all have ownership to, take possession of, and find meaning in.  To find safety in, in a deeply unsafe world for marginal identities.  De-presencing is something that for many of us, takes place through no choice of our own —  in this context I reference what it means to me personally to be neurospicy and chronically ill —  lacking the energy or capital to maintain a consistent pace of living or production.  The demands of participation can compound my condition, as I'm sure it does for so many others; I have found access accommodations, as well intentioned as they might be, to be deeply flawed in practice.  And I hope that when I say finding agency in these parameters is no easy feat, it resonates for you.

Visibility can make us ill.

At times, visibility can cause harm.
***My own experiences of racism made me resentful of my invisibility growing up and desiring visibility, wishing for invisibility all over again when COVID-19 made East Asianness visible in all the wrong ways, and back to resentful at the neo-Orientalism Chinese culture is currently receiving as the West declines (27.02.2026)***

Visibility is an instrument / tool / method of the market.

Is an artwork an artwork if it doesn't exist?  If it never had a form?  If it was never witnessed, heard, felt by anyone at all?  These are not new questions, but three years ago I started to question why visibility was so important to me and every other artist I knew, even when other artists in my circle would admit that the sacrifices they were making to gain visibility for the sake of their careers was making them sick: mentally, physically, spiritually.  It was making me increasingly unwell too.

De-presencing is a performance of refusal, a non-performative performance.  The reason I will still insist in its value as performance, is that it takes an enormous amount of energy and cultivation to refrain from the ways in which we were indoctrinated to think of art / be an artist.  To resist our own impulses to feed the voracious beast.  And for me, the beauty in de-presencing is that it permeates other disciplines too.  In the Tao Te Ching (Laozi), there is a passage I keep returning to that says "when nothing is done, nothing is left undone".  In other words, the best course of action sometimes is no action at all.  For those in the back, hear loud and clear that this does not mean passivity in the face of oppression.  The most powerful forms of resistance can happen quietly, in the dark, without a performative shout, but with an understanding that exercising restraint can withhold fuel from the fires we're looking to extinguish on our collapsing Earth, and tattered social fabric.

Whether we de-presence through circumstance or choice, I encourage you to record your periods of de-presencing for yourself, without an explanation of what led you there; you owe this to no one.  And know that de-presencing is a complete way of being and nourishing yourself.