0x8x0_no

Born in Tokyo. After studying at the Department of Photography, College of Art, Nihon University, moved to Sydney in 2009 and graduated from the Marine Biology program at UTS. Exhibited at galleries across Australia under the name "Sara Pao," and developed an NFT project under the name "Ge:mini." In 2024, moved back to Japan for good and, based in home neighborhood Koenji, resumed working under the current name "0x8x0_no," which unites both earlier practices. Centering on photography, has presented work in forms unconstrained by medium, from digital to handbound books. Past dummy books include "Togenkyo" (2018) and "Dear," (2019), which took the land of the Indigenous people of Western Australia as its theme. Also makes illustrations on a whim under the name "Shiroanko." Runs the independent art shop "unprompted.love."

1. NotFunAnymore!!! Zine / already published, 2025 / A5 / edition of 100 In 2026, I wanted to gather with friends from all over the world at the Full Moon Party on Koh Phangan. But these times don't make that so easy. Photographs taken between 2014 and 2018 — a record of a time when we could still have fun. Looking back at them now, their meaning has changed. Tourism, land, occupation, and the aftermath of war. It reaches even faraway places, even into pension funds. This zine is about that shift in awareness. 2. POV (working title) Artist book / unpublished / 30cm x 30cm - A handmade artist book with photographs transferred onto PVC material, still in progress. A work that transfers everyday scenes onto a transparent, artificial material to express the distortions of reality and the way we refuse to look at a world that is right there in plain sight. PVC is artificial, chemical, petroleum-derived, and bad for the human body. But that is exactly why I thought it was perfect. I don't know how long PVC lasts. It may yellow, it may degrade. But that seemed just like the world we are living in now. Climate change, geopolitical tension, information manipulation, the rise of nationalism, politics run by the top 1% of the wealthy. The world right now is like a bomb with any number of fuses already lit. We know it. And whether we know it or not, we look away. The PVC pages are transparent and clear, everything is visible, yet we pretend not to see. Because I think that is what this world is, I chose PVC as the material. And still we go on living our daily lives. PVC is a material that exists while holding that contradiction, an uncertain material that makes an uncertain age. That is what this book is. A work that transfers everyday scenes onto a transparent, artificial material to express the distortions of reality and the way we refuse to look at a world that is right there in plain sight. I hope I can unveil it for the first time at this fair. 3. Kuro-ban (black edition) / Shiro-ban (white edition) Dummy book / unpublished / A4 - A photobook with no words. A dummy book made to keep a deliberate distance from heavy themes and to experience the sequence of photographs itself, purely. 4. New mini-zine (working title) Zine / unpublished / 15cm x 10cm Unpublished, planned for production. A zine of small photographs and illustrations with strange, uncanny content. A little larger than the palm of a hand, with a black cover and the title foil-stamped in silver. 5. RainbowRemix (zine version) Zine / unpublished / postcard size Unpublished, planned for production. A plan to make the NFT work "RainbowRemix" (released in 2023; six photographs and a poem, plus a self-made audio recording of the poem being read, accessible via a hidden URL) into a paper zine. 6. (working title) Past artist books Not for sale; considering bringing them to display only. One-of-a-kind pieces that cannot be remade.

At the root of my work are layers of space-time and the synchronizing of the unconscious. Things not yet visible, but already there. That is what I explore. And I think photobooks — handmade photobooks in particular — are well suited to expressing that, which is why I go to the trouble of making them. The private experience that arises between the viewer and the photobook in the act of looking at it. And what the flow of the photographic sequence creates: as the person facing it turns each page, they flow along with it. That experience spreads outward as a wave, resonating in many layers with different layers of time and with each viewer's own memories and feelings. It then synchronizes with something else again, and continues. I want to make the starting point of that. Or perhaps it is already the continuation of a resonating synchronicity, and I simply make one "point" — that is, my own work — for now, in order to give it a comprehensible form. From that point, I hope the waves of resonance keep synchronizing on and on. I also insist on the form of the book because I think that, unlike a painting, a single photograph cannot draw you into a world on its own — or rather, that a single one is too fragmentary. It is only when there is a sequence of photographs — eight, or fifty, or two hundred — that you can finally touch the work, and if it is handbound, all the better. That is why I make them.

The Instagram bio of Waza Waza — Iga Art Book Fair says "International Art Book Fair that is far from the big city for the reason." Seeing that, I felt deeply convinced. I don't remember how I ended up finding this art fair's Instagram account, but I discovered it a long time ago and decided then that I would absolutely apply once the deadline drew near — and now I am applying. I always feel that encounters like this, which seem like chance, are also some kind of fate. And when I saw the photographs of Sukodo, I intuitively sensed from them the energy the building holds as a whole — an energy made from the layering of everything that has happened there, moment by moment, together with the energy the building possesses in itself — and I felt it was a very good place and became greatly interested. I also take the word Togenkyo (an earthly paradise) as a theme, which I frame as: Togenkyo: No one can reach Togenkyo unless you never want it. If you want it badly, you will never find it. It never exists physically; it is in your mind. And there is one more thing I always keep in mind. The various speeds that society tries to make us chase — quarterly figures, tax deadlines, productivity, cycles of consumption, the speed that organizations carry — these are a uniform speed created by capitalism, not the natural flow of time. Time can, by nature, slow down or speed up depending on the season, the weather, and the state of one's own mind and body. It may differ from person to person by temperament, too. In my teens, I was thrown off by that speed and convinced myself I was a person who could do nothing. After I moved to Australia in my early twenties, I realized: when there's no need to hurry, you don't have to hurry. When you need to, you can move fast. What matters is not to be swayed by the speed of the world or of other people — so as not to forget the things inside me that take even me a long time to notice, the things I might forget in an instant, and so that I can keep looking clearly at what the world and other people let fall as they keep up with the pace. For reasons like these, this art book fair seemed to have a unique axis of time and a pace unlike any other art book fair, and I thought that, if I can meet them, I want to meet the people who gather there, and I want to take on the challenge! Thank you very much.