Welcome.
Before we talk about schedules, rooms, or practicalities, I want to name the atmosphere in which we gather.
The world around us is full of war and chaos. Not only literal war, though there is no shortage of that. Also moral chaos. Intellectual chaos. A kind of spiritual flattening masquerading as progress.
The elites of our nations have become so detached from reality that they no longer see people as citizens. They see them as obstacles, consumers, target groups, variables on a computer screen.
They forgot the social contract.
They forgot that they serve at our pleasure, and not the other way around.
They are not easily deterred by protest, because they assume the public has already been pacified. Pacified by material incentives. By financial comfort. By entertainment. By fear. And so they keep crossing one line after another.
War becomes normal.
Disease becomes leverage.
Ignorance becomes policy.
And the human being becomes an inconvenience.
Since 2020, this tendency has become harder to ignore. A quiet war on humanism has been declared openly. A war on attention. On literacy. On Enlightenment itself. The core idea that ordinary people can think, write, reason, and participate in shaping the world around them is being challenged by the ones who hold the most power.
They are not merely neglecting the public. They are actively devolving it.
If this continues, then within twenty years we may have a majority of adults who cannot write a full sentence on their own without assistance. That is not a technological victory. It is a civilizational failure.
A docile population is easier to manage.
An intellectually degraded population is easier to rule.
And corrupt elites have always known how to profit from war, crisis, and disease.
They want to eradicate thought and creativity.
They will fail.
They will fail because they stopped believing in humanity. They think that thousands of years of history, craft, struggle, survival, and symbolic thought can simply disappear if we forget hard enough. They are wrong.
They are full of hubris.
And we all know enough history to know the fate of those who dare be so arrogant.
So why are we here?
We are here because refusal also needs a form.
And for one week, our form is research.
We are here in defiance of the acceleration sentiment of our time. We chose, very deliberately, to step off the racing track. To slow down. To listen better. To think longer thoughts. To go deep into the uncharted territories of our artistic journeys without immediately converting everything into content, output, metrics, or performance.
This is not a productivity retreat.
It is not an optimization sprint.
And it is not a networking event dressed up as an artistic gathering.
This week is lab-first.
That matters.
Making comes before programming.
The labs are the heart of this week.
Morning circles help us align.
Workshops ignite our creative spark.
Discussions help us get inspired.
Field sessions take the work outside – to the real world.
Sharing helps unfinished things move forward.
Social time lets us be humans together.
And rest (which I hope we’ll have enough of) keeps the whole thing honest.
But the labs come first.
That is not just logistics.
It is an ethic.
It says that attention matters.
Process matters.
The unfinished thing on your desk matters.
The strange collaboration that has not found its shape yet matters.
The failed experiment matters.
The fragment matters.
We believe in exploration.
We believe in collaboration.
We believe in tedious manual work.
And yes, I mean tedious.
Because not everything valuable arrives fast.
Not everything meaningful arrives cleanly.
And not everything can be optimized without being diminished.
We believe that what we do has value.
And we also know that, in the cosmic sense, it is meaningless all the same.
Oddly enough, that is a liberating thought.
Because when you stop demanding that every gesture justify itself before markets, platforms, institutions, or invisible algorithms, something opens up. You can work honestly. You can take risks. You can fail without immediately turning failure into a brand. You can make something because you love the craft. Because you are drawn toward a question. Because the process itself gives dignity to life.
So what does that mean for this week?
It means minimal bureaucracy.
It means self-organization whenever possible.
It means trust.
It means an adult atmosphere, while not neglecting the child-like play that art demands.
It means protecting concentration without glorifying isolation.
It means making room for both deep focus and real collaboration.
It means asking for help when you need it.
It means offering help when you can.
It means understanding that meals matter, walks matter, silence matters, transitions matter, and sometimes the most important part of the work is the one hour that looks unproductive from the outside.
This week is also, quietly, a rehearsal.
A rehearsal for the kind of institution we want Shufu to become.
Not a branch office of politics.
Not a decorative wing of academia.
Not a content farm for corporate platforms.
But a real independent place where thought, craft, and community can meet on their own terms.
Whatever the outcomes of this week will be, I hope they will be pure.
Maybe not polished.
Maybe not finished.
Maybe not legible to everyone outside of this house.
But pure.
Untainted by vanity.
Untainted by the pressure to appear smarter than we are.
Untainted by the need to perform certainty.
Born out of love.
Love of craft.
Love of thought.
Love for humanity, with all of its faults.
Because that too is part of the point.
We are here because humans are flawed.
Because humans forget.
They get tired.
They misunderstand each other.
They fail.
And still, we create.
In a time when so many seek destruction, we choose creation. In an age obsessed with the fastest, cleanest, most frictionless solution, we choose to take our time. We choose to get our hands dirty. We choose to experiment, to make mistakes, to fail, to learn.
To be human.
And that, to me, is one of the deepest meanings of research.
Not mastery.
Not dominance.
Not the performance of intelligence.
Research begins with a much simpler admission:
I do not know.
Intelligence may well be simulated by resource-intensive computer operations.
But ignorance is still natural.
And the first step in any serious research project is acknowledging our own ignorance without shame and without panic.
Knowledge may be finite.
Ignorance is endless.
And that’s great!
That means there is still somewhere to go.
So bring your questions.
Bring your fragments.
Bring your obsessions.
Bring your failed sketches, your half-formed thoughts, your unresolved tensions.
And bring your ignorance too. Especially that.
Let us learn together.
Let us teach one another.
Let us make things that carry the mark of real hands, real time, real attention.
Let them keep their sterile acceleration.
Let them keep their fantasies of frictionless culture and obedient minds.
We are here for something else.
We are here to think.
We are here to make.
We are here to collaborate.
We are here to become ourselves.
Welcome to Shufu Studio’s first Research Week.
Let us begin.
