I chatted with Hana Omori from artist collective Keiken, founded in 2015 by Hana, Tanya Cruz and Isabel Ramos. Keiken construct digital worlds, create iterative audiovisual installations and performances, and work with communities to explore alternative realities. The collective is currently on a collaborative residency with the School of Digital Arts (SODA), Manchester Metropolitan University, and arts organisation Abandon Normal Devices (AND), working on their ongoing interactive project ‘Morphogenic Angels’. Before starting a more intensive period of the residency at SODA, I spoke with Hana about the importance of space and time to iterate and experiment, reflected on the excitement that comes from working with new communities, and explored how Keiken approaches worldbuilding, collaboration and the power of fantasy and play.
Lesley Taker: Keiken create expansive universes that are incredibly detailed and textural, but there’s also a real intimacy in your work—often sensual, emotional, and rooted in different ways of perceiving reality. How do you balance this scale of genuine gamified worldbuilding with the deeply personal, individual experience?
Hana Omori: Keiken began as a friendship. It started with working together: trying to find truth and sacred moments, to find magic. For us, worldbuilding doesn’t happen in isolation; it starts from shifting our perceptions and realities, often through lived experience, nature, and deep connection. We’ve always been innately community-based, and the process has always been intimate.
From the beginning, there’s been this kind of collective dreaming—imagining stories or characters with friends and making them real. ‘Feel My Metaverse’ (2019) was one of the early examples when we created futures from shared beliefs. It’s playful, and rooted in genuine connection. You don’t understand it as a methodology because it comes from just making things up with your friends and believing in them together, pushing each other to learn and feel comfortable trying new approaches.
LT: Constructing an approach out of affection and mutualism. The power of collective imagination.
HO: Exactly. Fantasy became our safe space. The real world wasn’t serving us, so we made a parallel one—and over time, because enough of us believed in it, it became real. Reality doesn’t exist, so we can rewrite the story more authentically to who we are and the spaces we want to exist in.
LT: And when you create that world in digital space—how does that shift things, if it does?
HO: It doesn’t. It’s still deeply relational. We’re constantly learning, and upskilling one another—it’s much harder to do any of that stuff alone. When you’re scared to try something, having others there makes it possible. With Mati [Bratkowski, long-time Keiken collaborator who works on the animation / game-engine side of things], for example, he’s been teaching Tanny physical animation. We’ve always taught and learned from one another: it’s a decolonial way of working that prioritises survival and exchange over hierarchy. That’s our currency, learning through friendship.
LT: Your work often centres on being ‘othered’ or excluded, especially thinking about empathy, access, and how communities are built. How does that inform your new work that you’re exploring more through the residency with Sakura Sky, a queer, deaf-blind artist from Japan?
HO: Working with Sakura has been transformative. It’s not just about bringing her in as a character or avatar into ‘Morphogenic Angels’ —it’s about understanding her perception and how she changes the fabric of reality through her existence. That takes time, deep learning, and presence.
When we first met, we communicated through interpreters and very gradual touch. But over time, we developed our own way of connecting without words. It was about coexisting and co-transforming. It went beyond an artistic collaboration as we influence how one another experiences the world. We’re still learning how to embed all of that into the work. It’s incredibly layered, and it is nice to work together in person through this residency.
We’re not trying to create empty avatars, we want to understand another person’s inner world. That’s the challenge. You follow the unknown because you feel it’s the right thing to do, even if you don’t know the outcome. The best work comes from genuine experience and belief: of really having something to say. You know when art is fake, you can feel it.
LT: How do you think welcoming a new group into your ongoing project, ‘Morphogenic Angels’ (one which has always thrived on collaboration) through the AND and SODA residency will shift your process?
HO: We’ve found that people are hungry for community. In terms of inviting them in, we don’t care if someone is an established collaborator or not; if there’s curiosity, if they bring something real, and there’s a connection, we are excited to work together and see what comes out of it.
Working with communities and young people feels different from the usual way of working as an artist, when everything is about your role and your voice. It’s not about us, it’s about them. The attention is on them. That’s when it feels most rewarding and transformational.
LT: As someone who works in digital art and curates with process in mind, I love residencies – especially ones that give space to iterate and experiment, like you’ve had here with AND. What has that openness given the work?
HO: With Sakura, it’s an ongoing process of embedding perception, interaction, and experience into the world we’re building. Even just figuring out how to communicate with her changed everything. These shifts inform the entire design and narrative approach. You need that time to achieve that – it involves new understandings of reality, and we don’t know what it’s going to look like until we’ve experienced it.
It’s the only way we know how to work. We need to live something before we can make art about it. We’ve often operated in unsustainable ways—just doing everything, without funding—but it’s been the only way to stay true to ourselves. And honestly, every artist needs this time and space. It’s not unique to us.
LT: You mentioned earlier that your worlds are meant to be alternatives to a reality that wasn’t made for you. Can you speak a little about that? And about how tech helps you play around with your understanding of reality?
HO: The current gameplay (the systems we’re living within) is unfair. Things feel fragmented and isolating. Technology is catching up with our imaginations, but the platforms we use are increasingly individualistic.
We want to show that other ways of existing are possible. We’re constantly asking, “What is the truth?” and then we shift language and symbols to find new ways of expressing that. That it’s possible to play “the game” differently. We’re trying to present that to people, that subtle shift into considering different ways of being, or alternative structures, because this version doesn’t work.
To test different versions of this, access to a place like SODA is incredible. It’s like a candy shop for people who love tech—there’s so much to explore. We don’t always know who will do what or how things will unfold—it’s often driven by our collective intuition, heart-to-hearts, and trial-and-error. That’s part of the magic.
LT: You’ve talked a lot about the power of collaboration. Can you say a bit more about how central that is for Keiken?
HO: ‘Morphogenic Angels’ wouldn’t be what it is without collaborations, and the people we work with are as much a part of it as we are. We work with them because there’s a synergy, a shared approach and an understanding of what’s possible, together. Mati [Bratkowski] especially has brought so much to Keiken—his energy and creativity have massively evolved our work.
The sound design too – by Flore Tudor (Wavesovspace) – is a huge part of what makes our world feel how we understand it, and makes it recognisable. We often struggle with hierarchical models of working and crediting work (especially in the art world) because the magic only happens when everyone’s voices merge. So many people who are essential to making work are constantly hidden. Our world doesn’t exist without collaboration.
The work is made in this merging. That intimacy and trust provide the foundation for our world, and allow us to achieve things we never could if we approached it alone.
Lesley Taker is a Liverpool-based freelance curator, arts producer and writer specialising in digital art and art & technology, particularly gaming.
Keiken are an artist collective who collaboratively build and imagine speculative futures to test-drive new ways of existing. They do this through filmmaking, gaming, installation, XR, blockchain, and performance.
Worldbuilding and the Nature of Reality is on at Modal gallery in the School of Digital Arts, 22 April – 7 May 2025
This interview was supported by Abandon Normal Devices.
Published 27.04.2025 by Natalie Hughes in Interviews
1,547 words