ABOUT

NONORARA began through an ongoing observation of the relationships between learning, action, exhibition, and organization.

In many cases, a practice does not begin with a complete concept, a formal venue, or a clearly defined position. It often begins earlier, through movement, conversation, making, temporary collaboration, the use of space, and responses to real environments.

These processes may not yet have a name. They may not eventually become a complete exhibition. Yet real communication, work, judgment, and change have already taken place among the people involved.

NONORARA began from this condition.

Its earliest foundation came from the initiator’s long movement between institutional and non-institutional environments: entering schools, institutions, markets, and projects, while also forming paths through fieldwork, cities, embodied experience, and independent action.

NONORARA, however, is not a presentation of those personal experiences.

It attempts to translate ways of acting that once depended on individual experience into a structure that different people can enter, alter, take responsibility for, leave, and continue operating.

“NONORARA” is not a word with a fixed etymology or a fully predetermined meaning.

It developed from the condition suggested by “nora / 野良,” and was formed as a name that can be spoken and circulated naturally across different language environments.

Here, “nora” does not simply mean wandering, separation, or the absence of belonging.

It is closer to a way of existing without dependence on a single system. A person may enter schools, institutions, markets, exhibitions, and other real structures, gaining resources, experience, and relationships from them, while retaining the capacity for independent judgment and redirection.

For this reason, NONORARA is not an identity label used to define people in advance.

It is closer to a name for a particular condition of operation.

Its meaning does not primarily come from linguistic analysis, but from how it is used, judged, and tested in reality.

NONORARA is not an identity that can be established through self-declaration alone.

A person, a practice, or a collaborative relationship may be considered to be in the condition indicated by NONORARA when it holds the following characteristics at the same time.

First, it does not operate through dependence on a single structure.

It can move between different systems, environments, and relationships, rather than relying on one institution, one identity, or one predetermined path in order to continue existing.

Second, it takes place in reality.

It does not remain at the level of concept, plan, or expression. It enters concrete environments, accepts the constraints created by time, space, people, resources, and responsibility, and receives feedback from reality.

Third, it does not depend on acceptance.

It does not need to be recognized by an institution, market, or system of evaluation before it has the right to continue acting. Even when it is not yet understood, supported, or exhibited, it can still form its own next step.

Fourth, it has the capacity to continue generating.

Its path is not entirely predetermined. It gradually forms through action, friction, failure, collaboration, and feedback, and continues to change with its environment.

NONORARA does not attempt to absorb every independent, temporary, or informal practice into itself.

Openness does not mean the suspension of judgment.

Whether something constitutes NONORARA does not depend on whether it appears marginal, free, or experimental. It depends on whether these conditions are actually present in operation.

The operation of NONORARA can be understood through five interconnected principles.

Generation

Structure is not fully designed before reality begins.

It gradually appears through action, friction, mistakes, collaboration, and feedback. Plans may exist, but they cannot replace reality, nor can they determine every outcome in advance.

Operation

A practice must actually take place.

People must enter concrete work. Projects must enter spaces and relationships. Actions must leave traces and face failure, deviation, stagnation, and revision.

A structure that cannot operate remains only an idea.

Nomadism

Nomadism is not wandering, nor is it the romanticization of instability.

It refers to the ability to act across different structures: to preserve continuity of judgment, responsibility, and action while roles, environments, cities, institutions, and relationships change.

Nomadism does not mean leaving every structure. It means not being permanently confined by any single position.

Metabolism

NONORARA does not aim for everyone to remain indefinitely.

People may enter and leave. Relationships may form and come to an end. What must be sustained is whether experience remains, whether methods can be transferred, whether responsibilities can be handed over, and whether the structure can continue through changes in people.

Entry is not absorption, and departure is not betrayal.

Non-capture

NONORARA does not define itself through opposition to institutions, markets, or systems.

It may enter schools, spaces, galleries, markets, and other projects, and may collaborate with different systems. Yet no single system gains the authority to define NONORARA completely through that connection.

Non-capture does not mean refusing connection. It means retaining boundaries, judgment, and the capacity to change direction after connection has taken place.

Among these five principles, Nomadism and Metabolism form the two most fundamental dimensions.

Nomadism describes how people act. Metabolism describes how structure continues.

Over the coming years, NONORARA will continue to operate through a recurring path:

Action → Record → Observation → Reflection → Formation of temporary methods and structures → Further action

This is not a fixed production process imposed on every participant.

It is the basic way NONORARA understands its own practice.

Action enters reality first.

Records preserve the works, spaces, relationships, divisions of labor, errors, deviations, and changes that emerge within it.

Observation and reflection are not only used to prove that a project succeeded. They also identify what was not realized, which unexpected relationships emerged, which methods should be abandoned, and which judgments need to be revised.

The structures formed through this process are always temporary.

They must be tested again through the next action.

For this reason, the archive is not an addition made after completion, nor is it only a repository for successful outcomes.

It is the basis from which further action can take place.

NONORARA does not presuppose a single, permanent form of membership.

Different people may enter actual operation at different stages and in different ways, including:

• initiating or organizing an action
• participating in artistic production
• taking responsibility for curatorial work and judgment
• coordinating spaces, installation, or on-site execution
• working with photography, moving image, design, writing, translation, or documentation
• participating in discussion, observation, and post-project organization
• providing spaces, resources, relationships, or other concrete forms of support

Roles are not assigned permanently at the point of entry.

The same person may occupy different positions in different projects. In one action, they may work through artistic production; in another, through execution, coordination, documentation, or curation.

Positions are formed through actual work and should change according to the needs of each action.

NONORARA allows groups, core nodes, and relatively stable working relationships to emerge naturally. However, these are not predetermined as permanent centers.

A center may form, and it may also shift.

When familiar relationships become closed and cease to produce new connections, responsibilities, or change, they gradually lose their structural meaning.

NONORARA does not aim to continually expand a fixed list of members.

It is closer to an operating structure composed of different layers:

• a foundational node that maintains the public interface, basic judgment, and continuity of the archive
• project groups formed temporarily around specific actions
• initiators, curators, organizers, and executors who assume real responsibility at a given stage
• core nodes that emerge naturally through continued operation but are not permanently fixed
• subsequent nodes capable of initiating actions again in different cities, environments, and relationships
• people who have left the current action but remain present through archives, experience, and existing relationships

NONORARA does not require every action to be initiated by the same person, nor does it require every participant to share an identical position or method.

What it seeks to sustain is that action takes place in reality, responsibility can be explained, experience can remain, and relationships can continue to generate.

What can enter NONORARA is not limited to completed artworks or fully developed exhibition plans.

It may also include:

• a practice already operating in reality
• an action that has not yet formed a complete outcome
• an attempt connected to cities, spaces, bodies, or everyday routes
• a collaboration that has actually taken place
• a working method that can be observed, recorded, and developed collectively
• concrete work involving curation, organization, photography, design, translation, documentation, or technical support
• a person willing to assume real responsibility
• a space, resource, or relationship capable of bringing an existing action into a new environment

An action does not lose its value as a record simply because it did not reach a successful outcome in conventional terms.

If communication, work, decisions, conflict, adjustment, failure, or thought actually took place, it has already become part of the structure.

However, entering the archive does not mean that all content will be made fully public.

Recording, publishing, and exhibiting are three different levels of judgment.

NONORARA does not use traditional membership recruitment as its primary point of entry.

Nationality, educational background, school affiliation, medium, résumé, and existing identity are not the sole conditions that determine whether someone can enter.

Entry usually begins through one concrete action.

A person does not need to promise long-term belonging in advance, nor obtain permanent membership status. The real judgment takes place during operation:

• Did they actually participate?
• Did they assume responsibility?
• Were they able to work with others?
• Were they willing to face feedback from reality?
• Did they allow experience, methods, or relationships to continue generating?

Entry does not mean being given a fixed path.

NONORARA does not promise a standardized route of growth, nor does it decide in advance what position each person should occupy.

A position must gradually form through actual action.

Participants may leave after completing a certain stage of work. They may also adjust or end their participation while a project is still in operation.

Departure does not need to be understood as the breakdown of a relationship.

Work, responsibility, credit, and archives that have already taken place are not erased by departure. At the same time, a person who has left the current action is not required to continue representing NONORARA.

Where possible, departure should include necessary explanation, handover, and documentation, so that experience does not remain only with one individual.

A person may leave one action and later return through a different role, in a different city, or within a different relationship.

What NONORARA seeks to sustain is not the permanence of people, but the possibility of reconnection and renewed occurrence.

The NONORARA archive does not preserve only completed exhibitions.

It also records:

• projects that were not completed
• actions that were forced to stop
• processes that have not yet been made public
• meetings, collaboration, and changes in roles
• sites, routes, and spaces
• failure, deviation, and changes in judgment
• research, prehistory, and methodological texts
• reflections that continue after a project has ended

The archive is not proof of success, nor is it an idealization of the past.

It carries another responsibility: to prevent processes that actually occurred from being easily erased, and to allow those who come later to see how structures formed, where they were obstructed, how they changed, and how work might continue from there.

People are connected through archives, and archives gain meaning through people’s actions.

NONORARA may remain open, but it does not abandon boundaries.

A practice that lacks actual action, refuses basic responsibility, depends only on conceptual declaration, or merely adopts “independent,” “marginal,” or “informal” as a posture does not automatically become part of NONORARA.

NONORARA does not measure its growth by absorbing every person and every project.

It is more concerned with the following questions:

Did something actually happen? Can responsibility be identified? Was experience retained? Can structure continue to generate through change?

NONORARA is not a fixed organization waiting to be joined, nor a name waiting to be possessed.

It is a structure repeatedly activated, passed through, operated, altered, and unfolded again in reality.