SOFTSEIZE
Softseize is an independent, long-term project on focusing on the crafts and the folds within. materials, making, makers.
Yunnan is the starting point.
it's not a preservation story, the craftmen i sit with have their own perspective, and inspiring life experiences. softseize is someone who stays, listens first. understands a material and where it sits. then connects it outward to people and platforms that might give it a new perspective.
I spent a decade in the work of culture and commerce — framework, strategy, layouts, repeat. At some point i realised i had been trained into a whole way of understanding both. Even my curiosity, my instincts, were probably products of that training. If i threw the training out, what would i still care about? Would i still ask questions on instinct alone? And what would these questions be?
september 2025, i started an experiment in unlearning myself. Softseize came out of it.
I walked into the lives of a few craftmen in yunnan, with no agenda. One fieldwork trip after another. Or put differently, i made some lovely, authentic new friends. most of them are over fifty. In today's cultural landscape they get called artisans, inheritors of intangible heritage. To me, they felt like elders from the neighbourhood. The craft they live on, the mastery and the learning of it, their connections with nature, with materials, their families, their daily life.
Six months in, and i'll keep this going for as long as i can.
this project is my sincere thank-you to yunnan. I've lived here, on and off, for close to a year and half. History, mountains, water, food, people.
I came in heavy, opened wide, leaving light.
And i'll carry this part with me.
substack：https://substack.com/@softseize
instagram: @softseize