a map of fragments

i took some time to myself the past year or so. last summer i went to Austria and Hungary, where i made a conceptual photo-text work. i didn’t tell many people about it, because that’s what i needed—creation without expectation, burden, or responsibility. if you know me at all, you know i’m an introvert to the nth. and sometimes art-making in a public way is too much.

if i’ve learned anything, it’s that art is best when it’s on my own terms—when i don’t worry too much about how it will exist in the world (if it even needs to). there’s a certain rawness i’m still figuring out how to hold without smoothing it over.

i went to Japan for the winter—back to my beloved Tokyo for the first time since the pandemic. spent a few days up in Sapporo for the snow festival (bucket list moment), then settled in Osaka for a while. Osaka was grand, but Tokyo will always be the one. there’s just something about being alone in the biggest city on earth, but never feeling like your introversion is an obstacle. which is pretty much the opposite of New York—a city that dares you to keep up or get out. no wonder punk was born there (among other places).

being a New Yorker has made me tough. Tokyo isn’t soft—far from it—but it carries a kind of steadfastness. a quiet determination. maybe i wouldn’t feel so at home there if i hadn’t lived in New York first. that edge gave me the grit to navigate and the instinct to notice what’s hidden.

and honestly, that’s not so different from being an artist. the lifelong impulse to peel back the surface, reach through the veil, and try—somehow—to share something no one else can quite see. at least, not the way you do. it’s a risk, always.

but i’m ready now. ready to share something new.

a harras is a multi-part project that brings together a short film, an experimental album, and a chapbook. it’s something i’ve been slowly building, in different forms, over the past few years—though parts of it trace back much further. the project explores memory, loss, and the strange ways the past loops into the present. some of it is autobiographical. some of it isn’t. but it doesn’t really matter which. it’s less about telling a story and more about creating a space—something to feel your way through. i think of it as an archive of ghosts, or maybe a map of fragments. it’s not meant to be decoded. just experienced.

I’d rather not over-explain—just check it out. Maybe I’ve already said too much.