The collaboration between Helen Hines and Natascha Schoenaich began with shared visits to the mountains of Kumano, Japan. Through encounters with neighbors, abandoned houses (akiya), burned structures, and partially reconstructed homes, their research unfolded as a practice of listening — attentive to weathered timber, breathing shoji paper, shifting soil, and the subtle acoustics of inhabitation. The resulting art book accompanies the exhibition, weaving film stills with writing grounded in eco-somatic practice and feminist new materialism. While Schoenaich’s work traces the historical and anthropological textures of the Mie region, Hines’ sculptural and filmic works are shaped by an intimate grief process following her mother’s death. Clay, compost, ash, found materials, repetitive hand-formed gestures, and durational filming enact decay not as disappearance, but as a generative and relational force.

As curator, Hines brings artists Vicente Yáñez, Maria Ferrer, and Damián Noguera into the exhibition’s field, expanding it through spatialized sound and performance. Across the works, processes of composting, fermentation, weathering, vibration, and duration become collaborators alongside the artists. The exhibition does not claim to speak for places or preserve what has been lost; instead, it seeks to understand and explore the conditions under which encounter becomes possible. Visitors are invited to slow down and situate themselves within these unfolding processes — becoming part of a shared ecology of resonance that continues through a nine-day program of talks, performances, and coming together.