derelict koan creative | about

derelict koan creative is rohan + belinda.

about rohan

After completing a diploma in professional writing, Rohan spent a few years away from creative activity to learn about farming and growing things, beginning work on the derelict koan trilogy in his spare time 2002. Since publishing Three in December 2009, Rohan has worked full time on the trilogy in order to give the work its best chance to succeed. Rohan's ultimate goal is to produce a stand-alone fourth novel set in the same world - but producing such a work would be solely motivated by a healthy readership of the trilogy. A lover of world building, Rohan is currently preparing a series of paintings to help further realise the setting of derelict koan, before commencing work on the final novel set, which is scheduled publication the day after the Mayans come back to take over the world, 22/12/02.

about belinda

After six years as an undergraduate, Belinda decided to leave behind her aspirations to perpetual student and shoot for first class honours. For interested readers, Belinda's honours thesis on Murakami Haruki's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle will soon be available for download here. Though we sheepishly admit that such an exercise would make Noboru Wataya proud.

Belinda now works as a Business Consultant in addition to her work on the derelict koan trilogy as Measure to the Mercury. She has done a range of professional roles, including insurance sales, internal communications, training design, process and systems improvement and is currently working as a consultant on enterprise ICT networks.

about derelict koan

often wonders why — despite humanity’s endeavour and ingenuity, rapid improvements in technology and longevity — we have not managed to alleviate the boredom/fear/work requirements for the majority of beings living on Earth. The derelict koan trilogy is our attempt to explore and understand this question (amongst others) through art.

derelict koan’s goal is to support art in the world.

We think that art is underrated in our society, and where art is valued it is only as a consumer product, cultural currency or status symbol. Or maybe amongst subcultures that are defined in the rarefied divide from the material realities of the ‘silent majority’. We think that art should be valued for its own sake, not for its dealer valuation or whether it looks nice on the wall behind the couch. Experiencing, contemplating and creating art can lead to deeper understanding of ourselves and others, and grow our innate wisdom. We think that art cultivates a certain shimmer in each of us that supports and sustains our sensitivity to the emotional intensity of life, in contrast to the destabilising and desensitising effects of a market lens.

We support any activity that weakens the citadel of the commercial and the consumerist. Poetry, sorcery, love, craft — anything with the latent power to unleash an extraordinary life from the pandemic of drudgery.

We are not frustrated revolutionaries sniping at the political order — though it’s fair to say that we wouldn’t miss them if gravitational fields became related to ethical integrity … assuming that we are not ourselves caught bumbling into them as space junk — and let’s face it — we would be.

Nevertheless …

While we accept that we live in a capitalist economy and that money is the most generic (and therefore a most useful) asset, we think that our work-spend-eat-sleep lives cannot support our fundamental need for improvement in ourselves and in our environment. Living an artistic life is deeply nourishing personally and spiritually, and we hope it can also be nourishing financially for ourselves and for other artists.

Our vision for derelict koan creative is to use the derelict koan trilogy as a springboard to help artists and writers to support art in the world. We will do this by opening this website to other artists and writers to show off and/or sell their work here, combining our efforts to practice, propagate and promote art in the world. We can also help writers to strengthen their work and develop direct relationships with their audiences, free from interventions of the middlemen and gatekeepers of the standard publishing model.

Longer term, we seek to be successful enough to offer a free artists’ retreat. This last seems idealistic even to us, but for us, that’s the point.

Our vision for derelictkoan.com is to create a sprawling, immersive world for readers and like-minded discoverers and creators. As soon as we have time. In the meantime, we intend to continue our schedule to publish book two of the derelict koan trilogy, due for release in Q1 2012.

To summarise:

  • derelict koan is a pseudonym for a duo of Australian writers. We chose this name after seeing some graffiti on a local train station. It said ‘Zen unleshed’ (sic) and triggered a particularly sweet empathy.
  • The derelict koan trilogy is the name of our flagship work.
  • derelict koan creative is our business name, and our business is writing, editing and publishing.