Forking Sovereignty! Mutates Through Contagion! _ Part I
- Tzu-Tung Lee
- Mar 26
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 27
What is the difference between a human and an animal?
For 38 years, the Katratripulr Indigenous community has resisted the appropriation of their ancestral wetland. First taken in 1985 by the Taitung government to build "Asia's first Disneyland," the wetland was later re-appropriated for solar energy development as Taiwan shifted toward green initiatives. Generations of Katratripulr children have grown up as activists, fighting for their traditional territory.
The Truku community faces a similar plight, with Asia Cement Corp being granted permission to blast mountains for cement. So as Ruisui(瑞穗, Amis: Kohkoh)'s hot springs, Sun Moon Lake's Peacock Garden… — across Taiwan, numerous Indigenous lands are often caught in a conflict triangle between government, residents, and corporate interests. In these disputes, what some see as economic progress, others endure as generations of protests, legal battles, and unresolved suffering. Some residents even see suicide as a way to make a statement, and the only way to end the years-long strife.
The conflicts can be traced back to various unjust colonial land practices throughout Taiwan's history. One prominent example is the way the Japanese government appropriated natural resources through classification. In its effort to exploit Taiwan’s natural wealth, the Japanese government implemented a series of “pacification” policies, categorizing Indigenous people into three groups: "Raw Savages" (生番, unassimilated), "Transformed Savages" (熟番, partially assimilated), and "Civilized Savages" (化番, fully assimilated). For the "Raw" and "Transformed Savages," who were considered less “civilized,” land ownership was acknowledged only to varying degrees or, in some cases, deemed entirely void.
A striking example occurred in 1907 when Yasui Katsuji (安井勝次), a Japanese colonial officer, initiated an essay competition designed to support the colonial agenda. The competition called for essays that argued the "Raw Savages" can not be the rightful owners of their land. Based on these submissions, Yasui claimed in his research that Taiwan’s Indigenous people lacked personhood. According to him, they were not bound by the rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, or legal liabilities afforded under Japanese national law, rendering them non-legal persons who could be classified as animals. Consequently, their rights were systematically stripped away.
Forking the Lost Commons
Before Japan came to Taiwan, Indigenous people had long traded their land with other communities on the island. However, the colonial manipulation had many contracts with the Indigenous people voided, thus land could be seen as ownerless, and the government made new laws stating that the lands belonged to the nation. The notion of “Indigenous people” questions the legitimacy of modern nations sovereignty, of the alleged rights to land and properties. It reveals how colonial powers have used physical and contractual violence to steal the lands of Indigenous peoples.
In response to this history of appropriation, Hong Kong artist Winnie Soon and I decided to make a participatory art project titled Forkonomy() in 2020, queering our idea about the commons. We organized workshops to discuss "How to buy/own one milliliter of the South China Sea (Mandarin: 南海, Nan Hai)?" and gathered diverse participants—including policymakers, scholars, marine life conservators, cultural workers, artists, and Indigenous activists—to critique the ownership of that one milliliter of Nan Hai through discussions, auctions, contract drafting, and code certificate performances.
During the workshops, we explored various forms of ownership and eventually drafted a contract together based on the ownership model selected. For example, some participants viewed the South China Sea water as "private-owned." Since the artist of the project was the one who went near the South China Sea and collected the water to bring to the exhibition site, the participants decided the artist should be the owner of that water, and the price the water was sold for equaled the price of the artwork or the price of the artist's labor. On another day of the workshop with a different group of participants, they chose a "co-op" model, meaning that the seawater is owned by the community, and any transfer of ownership would have to be a joint decision.
South China Sea Ownership Options:
Co-op
the seawater is owned by the community (TBD).
the transition of ownership would have to be a joint decision.
Private-Owned
the seawater is owned by the bidder/artist
State-Owned
the seawater is owned by the nations (current countries claiming to have the ownership of the area: China, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam)
the winner of the bidder has to apply their ownership to these/the nation/s
Owned by Others
The sea is not owned by anyone that is at the current site, the bidder is pirating the seawater
Does Taiwan need to obey the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
Other possible ownership (eg. pirating)
To be decided by the participants
The Forkonomy() contract workshop workflow. Image credit: Tzu Tung Lee, Winnie Soon
In our first exhibition, the initial participants of the action agreed that the ownership style of Nan Hai is “co-op,” with the set price of 1.61 TWD /ml (1.61 NTD = 0.05737705 USD = 0.02473149 TEZOS on 19 Dec 2020), in which each participant will take on the relating ecological and economic responsibility of the South China Sea collectively and cooperatively by signing a contract. The second version puts the agreed and the co-owned one millilitre of the Nan Hai as an NFT (non-fungible token) on the Tezo chain, and the address which purchases it purchases the contract. Further, we published 10,000 editions of the cooperative contract (written in English, Chinese, and Computer Code), and its potential royalties will be used to generate the subsequent 10,000 editions. It means that we are generating more water buyers as the co-owners of Nan Hai, and every transaction is recorded beyond sovereignties.
In subsequent workshops held beyond Taiwan, the project addressed questions of international alliances and ecological stewardship, recognizing that concerns over shared resources like the South China Sea should extend beyond regional and national boundaries. Winnie and I wanted to rethink the politics of our contemporary economy with our techno-cultural systems.
By employing free and open-source software and decentralized protocols, we positioned the participatory project as a "commoning ship" for people who want to reclaim the once-lost commons and queer current sovereignty claims, which are still constantly upheld by military threats throughout global lands, seas and cultures.