Ou Ning, The Agritopianists: Thinking and Practice in Rural Japan (Boston and Helsinki: CAD+SR, 2024), translated by Matt Turner and Weng Haiying, designed by Xiaoma and Chengzi, produced by ISOGLOSS Books, published by Center for Arts, Design and Social Research, distributed by Artbook | Distributed Art Publishers.

As a part of his research and writing series on the historical practices of communitarian utopia in different countries since the 19th century, Ou Ning’s new book The Agritopianists: Thinking and Practice in Rural Japan focuses on the labor and life experiments of a group of intellectuals in rural areas of this Asian country in the 20th century. From the collective Atarashiki-mura (New Village) Movement initiated by Mushakoji Saneatsu, through many other individual semi-agricultural life practices of Japanese writers and artists, the book traces the emergence of a shared agricultural fundamentalism that informed and evolved into active political interventions in response to the social crisis caused by the Great Depression. The book also explores the enduring influence of Ando Shoeki, the great utopian thinker of the 18th century, on modern Japanese radical thought.

Ou Ning combines original field investigation with a close reading of the historical archives to construct a narrative spanning periods and geographies that is always attentive to specific details. The book takes the reader to the historical scene and asks them to consider its relevance to the even now more urgent questions of ways of living and planetary thinking. Among the many histories of utopian thought and experiments, this is a unique Asian version, a re-thinking of social and environmental possibilities through geographical, political, and cultural differences.

Order from Artbook | Distributed Art Publishers: https://www.artbook.com/9781735698113.html

Book Launch at Accent Society, New York

20:00-22:00, Thursday, December 19, 2024

Accent Society

Suite 702, 89 Fifth Avenue, New York 10003

Languages: Chinese/English

Free Admission

Author: Ou Ning

Member of ISOGLOSS Collective

OU Ning is an artist, curator, and writer. His practices in different periods encompass literature, music, film, art, design, architecture, urban research, utopian study, rural reconstruction, and geographical soundscape. He is the director of two documentaries, San Yuan Li (2003) and Meishi Street (2006); the Chief Curator of the Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture (2009); the founding Editor-in-Chief of the literary bimonthly Chutzpah! (2010-2014); and the initiator and practitioner of the Bishan Project (2011-2016). He taught at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University in 2016-2017 and has been a researcher at the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research (CAD+SR) since 2019. Since 2022, he lives and works in New York.

Translators: Matt Turner and Weng Haiying

Members of ISOGLOSS Collective

In addition to the work of Ou Ning, Matt TURNER and WENG Haiying have co-translated the economist Wu Jinglian, the sociologist Zhai Xuewei, the poet Yan Jun, and many others. Matt is the author of several collections of poetry and is an academic copy editor. Haiying works at the Tang Center for Early China, at Columbia University.

Host: Zhong Na

Member of ISOGLOSS Collective

ZHONG Na is the co-founder of Accent Society. A fiction writer and literary translator, she has received support from the MacDowell Fellowship, the Center for Fiction Fellowship, and the Tin House Workshop. Her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, swamp pink, Guernica, and more.

* PLUS: At the end of book launch, there will be an info session of the ISOGLOSS Workshop 2025.