The island Hashima has been an important location for Japanese coal-mining. From 1974 Hashima was abandoned because the resources were exploited. Today the island is uninhabited and has since taken on a ghostly, mythic status in the national imagination, aided by its appearance in Battle Royale, a Science FIction-Blockbuster in 2000. Spelling Dystopia asks how memory operates, how a site wears its history, both physically and metaphorically. We revisited the island for our film and photo project in 2008 / 2009.

Read more: text by Jelle Bouwhuis, 2009 / text by the artists 2009