Roughly one year has passed since the global coronavirus pandemic began. Still with no end in sight, we must nonetheless try to face up to what comes next and to a post-COVID world some day in the future. Whenever a zoonosis (that is, a disease that can transmit from animals to humans) like COVID-19 appears, we may well associate it with ecosystem shifts caused by the destruction of the natural environment or by global warming. In the Anthropocene, during which humankind has brought about immense changes to the planet’s ecosystems and geology, considering ways to coexist or maintain a better relationship with nature and other species is an urgent task. The international art scene has recently seen increasing numbers of works and exhibitions that reflect on the present and future state of ecosystems during the Anthropocene. And when we then consider the various things taking place right now all around the world, this is a theme that becomes even more significant. Given the current circumstances, what should people and art do to envision a better future?

Gustafsson&Haapoja, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Finnish visual artist Terike Haapoja and author, scriptwriter, and playwright Laura Gustafsson, focuses on problems that arise from anthropocentric worldviews, engaging in large-scale and long-term projects that aim to open us up to more comprehensive social concepts. In Becoming (2020), the video work that forms the core part of “Becoming – Proposals for Earthly Living,” its first solo exhibition in Japan, Gustafsson&Haapoja asks what is essential to being human. In a variety of places—from a tranquil location with a view of the sea to a quiet and lush forest, a city, or indoors—thirty-seven interviewees (activists, thinkers, artists, carers, children, and so on) respond to questions about ways of being that are meaningful for human life, and their thoughts about phenomena in bud at this very moment and which should be nurtured. Becoming and Bud Book – A Manual for Earthly Living, which the artists compiled based on the video work, serve as signposts for visitors to reflect on those same questions.

Even though we remain unable to move around freely like we did before, we know of several ways of connecting with others faraway, and thinking together with them about the same problems. These are perhaps other “buds” that we should nurture. Today, when the world faces a crisis, how should we live our lives? What kind of response do we give to this question directed at everyone now earthly living? Here is a place for thinking calmly about that.