Introducing the “Japan Art Islands” newsletter

Hello everyone, I hope this message finds you well.

A few weeks ago, I was wondering how to proceed with many things concerning this blog and the act of blogging about the Setouchi islands itself. After some reflection, I decided to experiment with a newsletter this year.

I tried before (with Substack) but I eventually stopped because a few things didn’t sit well with me about the company. Also, one thing I care more and more about with my content online is that I want to have control over it and not leave it in the hands of other companies like we’ve all been doing way too much in the past few years.

So, I’m trying the newsletter again with a few changes.

This new newsletter will solely be dedicated to our topic (Kagawa Prefecture, the Setouchi Islands and the Triennale.) It is self-hosted (like this site, which means it’s not in the hands of any company other than my web host, whom I pay to take care of my content and whom I can leave if they don’t do a satisfying job) and there will be two ways to subscribe.

1. You can subscribe to it for free, just like you can subscribe to this blog.
2. You can also become a paying subscriber. Yes, some content will be under a paywall, especially “exclusive content” that I’m the only one to post online and that is more likely to be stolen, either by an AI scraper or a human one. I hate it had to come to this, but this is the internet we have nowadays. However, when this content stops being “exclusive” (for example temporary exhibits, new art, etc.) I will post it here as an archive.

I’m not stopping this blog, but yes, it will serve more and more an archival purpose.

What does it practically mean?

Well, first of all, let me introduce and warmly advise you to subscribe to

 

“Japan Art Islands” the newsletter

 

Note that if you are already subscribed to this blog or were subscribed to the Substack newsletter a couple of years ago, I will automatically import the list, so you should be subscribed automatically (if you wish to unsubscribe, it’ll make me sad, but you’re of course totally free to do so). Of course, you’ll be a free subscriber by default.

I’ll post the first message very soon. As I’m not too sure how the mailing system works just yet, if you are subscribed and don’t receive anything, make sure to double-check in your spam folder and mark the mail as safe.

 

I’ll try to do my best and post weekly. Sometimes news where there are some, sometimes blog posts with new content.

 

Meanwhile, I’ll still post here when time allows, either old content (like the “retrospective” posts I sometimes do) or other things. We’ll see.

Of course, the static pages here are not moving (I may remove one or two less useful ones, but most will stay untouched apart from updates).

 

 

And while I’m here talking about upcoming changes, if you’re on social media, you may know there is a lot of turmoil right now. I already left Twitter a while ago (and Japanese people seem to finally realize that there is something really wrong with it) and now I’m slowly trying to leave Meta (which is much more difficult than leaving Twitter, especially Instagram that is unavoidable when you live in Japan.)

I’m moving most of my online social activity on platforms that I can host myself or, if I don’t, that are decentralized and not owned by a big company.

It means that nowadays, you’ll mostly find me there:

• Mastodon (for micro-blogging)
• Pixelfed (for sharing pictures)
• Loops (for short videos, it’s still brand new and in development as I’m typing this)

I’m not leaving YouTube (and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Google doesn’t do anything that’d force me to leave) and I’m also on Bluesky, but I’m not getting too invested in it, the more popular it’ll get the more likely it is to become as problematic as Twitter and Meta.

So you can follow me there, and also give them a shot if you haven’t yet.

 

I guess that’s all for now.

If you have any questions or comments, do not hesitate. 🙂