Kazumi Okahara Chin

Make it in private, sure, for yourself, your therapist. But to make art that you share with others, you must do the work to ensure that art is ethical. I don’t care how badly you hurt. I will say: you must stop doing this. You must consider the ramifications of your actions.

There may very well be a utility to work that exists to retraumatize; that work might even help others to work through their own trauma. Sure, that’s fine. But perhaps you’d be able to do that if you made better art. Perhaps if you worked harder, you’d be doing even better work.

The problem is that I see no work being done. From one work to another, nothing changes. Just a further entrenchment. Just a further digging into the sand. To say this is okay, I stand by my art. I will consider your suggestions, but my art is my art. I am who I am.

This is not good enough. You are not who you are. You make yourself every day into yourself. You are always remaking, remaking; you have the opportunity, every day, to want to change. Even if you can’t. Even if it’s hard. You can want to be different. And you can work to be so.

This is beyond games. This is the way art shows us who we are, and what we value. This is about becoming better at each iteration. What we demand is better art. But to make better art, we must become better people. We must be willing to change.

It is not the content itself that must change. It is the perspective. We must understand this to be true: this body of work posits a way of looking. It is that way of looking that people take issue with. Anything can be handled sensitively and with great care. This is not that.

This glorifies, normalizes, justifies by positing great shame as a curative to unethical actions. I’m sorry. Your great shame will not save you. Your great shame is nothing compared to the harm you cause others. How dare you posit shame as equal to harm.

How dare you believe in your own compassion for yourself when you cannot have compassion for others. And furthermore: how dare you invoke the tropes of something inherently problematic to deny your own actions. To say, well, that’s simply the way these things work. No, it’s not.

To reproduce traumatizing art knowing its failures is a choice. You make choices. Own your damn choices. Look at your damn self. Just look at yourself. Is this the person you want to be? Stop it with the shame. Bloody do something.

If this art helped you, you are not a bad person, nor should you be ashamed. But it doesn’t give you the right to defend it. Know there are better options available for you. Know this ending is a beginning for even better art that can help you more than you can now imagine.

You can always cultivate healthy relations where toxic ones exist. You know how? Through hard fucking work. You know how I know? Because, for the last five years, I’ve been learning how to love myself against all odds. And finding how to love kindly, ethically, lovingly.

And I know I still have a lot of growing to do. And if I ever make any unethical art, I will be the first to say, okay, let me reconsider my perspective. Let me rethink what it is I can do here. I am learning how to be accountable to others. I am learning to speak ethically.

But art is even more than mere speech. In speaking with others, we might make mistakes. But those mistakes pass, and we build on them. No one is being cancelled here for their mere speaking. Nor for their existence.

This is about art. Art offers us a way of seeing and being in the world. It is powerful. It makes claims about what is and ought to be. So sometimes the most ethical thing is to demand someone change. And to say that they are unwelcome until they proven that they have changed.