The Journal
Stories, craft, and creative provocations.
Notes from the residency — on making, on Ubud, on what it means to leave for a while.
What Is an Open Artist Residency?
Most residencies mean a call for applications, a panel, a six-month wait. An open residency drops the gate. What that means, and who it is for.
Ubud Beyond the Performance
Ubud has layers: tourist infrastructure, the wellness industry, and a third one underneath where people actually make things. A look past the show.
Why Ubud Became a Home for Working Artists
Ubud has drawn makers for a century. Here's why painters, writers and remote creatives keep choosing it as the place to actually do the work.
A Week or a Year: Planning a Creative Stay in Ubud
How long should a creative stay in Ubud be, what does it cost, and how do you set it up so you actually make work? A practical guide.
Artist Residency vs Coliving: Which Actually Helps You Make Work
Coliving sells community. Residencies sell prestige. For a working creative, which one actually helps you finish the work? An honest comparison.
The Studio Is the Point
A bed and a laptop is not a studio. A look at the working spaces at AIR — and why the room you make in changes the work you make.
Bali's Nomad Visa and Long Stays: A Practical Guide for Creatives
A plain guide to Bali visas for creatives planning a long stay — visa-on-arrival, B211, and the E33G remote-work visa. What to get and when.
Where to Stay in Ubud for Creative Work
Central, ricefield, or riverside? A working artist's guide to choosing where in Ubud you'll actually get work done, not just take nice photos.
How to Build a Daily Practice on a Long Stay
A month in Bali sounds like endless time to create. Then the days blur. Here is how to keep a daily creative practice on a long stay.
What to Pack for a Creative Residency in Bali
What to bring for a creative stay in Bali, what to leave home, and what to buy in Ubud. A practical packing guide for artists and makers.
What a Month in Ubud Actually Costs (the honest math for creatives)
Monthly rent, food, transport, studio space, and wifi in Ubud for a working artist or writer. Real numbers, regional variation, and what changes your…
Working from Ubud's cafés: when a laptop table is enough (and when it isn't)
How to work from Ubud's cafés, which ones actually have decent internet, the trade-offs of café culture, and when you should stop renting a chair and…
Ubud as a Writer's Retreat: What Happens When You Trade Routine for Ritual
Ubud works for writers not because it's quiet—it's not. Because it breaks your bad habits and forces real work.
Making Music in Bali: What a Monitor and Studio Speakers Teach You About Your Own Sound
Producing music on a creative stay means hearing your work the way a listener will. Place shapes what you make.
Why Creatives Book Months, Not Nights
The difference between a hotel night and a month in Bali isn't duration—it's permission. What changes when you stop being a tourist and start being a…
What Bali Actually Does to Creative Block
Change of place solves some things and not others. What a month in Bali can actually do for your creative block, and what you bring with you no matter…
Going Alone to Make Work
The fear of solitude, the freedom it brings, and how a residency community softens loneliness without killing focus.
The 5 a.m. Plan vs. What Actually Happens
You have a perfect morning routine planned. The heat, roosters, and pool have other ideas. Here's how to build one that actually holds.
Ubud: The Artist Town That Shaped Bali
How Ubud became Bali's creative capital: the story of Walter Spies, palace patronage, and the Pita Maha movement that preserved and elevated Balinese art.
In Bali, Art and Life Are Not Separate
The Balinese concept of taksu—spiritual energy in all things—means art isn't a career path or a hobby. It's how daily life breathes.
The Silversmiths of Celuk: A Craft 1000 Years in the Making
Celuk silversmith village preserves granulation and filigree techniques dating to the 9th century. Watch artisans work, learn the craft, or commission…
Mas: Where Balinese Woodcarving Learned to Speak
Mas village produces the most refined woodcarvings in Bali. Born from prophecy in the 14th century, shaped by master craftsmen in the 1920s, the…
Balinese & Indonesian Textiles: Ikat, Endek, Songket, and Batik
Four centuries of technique: ikat's resist-dyed patterns, endek's geometric weft, songket's gold threads, and batik's waxed precision. What makers use…
Starting a Fashion Brand in Bali: The Realistic Workflow with Local Makers
From first sample to shipment. What works in Bali's small-batch production ecosystem, what costs what, where it breaks, and how to move faster than you…
ArtJog: Yogyakarta's Contemporary Art Triennial from a Bali Base
ArtJog is Yogyakarta's premier contemporary art fair. Here's how to plan a visit from Ubud, timing your stay to catch the 2026 triennial.
Ubud's Art Museums: A 1-Day or 3-Day Route Through Bali's Art History
Four major art museums in Ubud tell the story of modern Balinese painting, traditional craftsmanship, and the global artists who made Ubud home. Here's…
Why We Don't Have an Application Process
The gatekeeping model of artist residencies made sense in the 20th century. Studio space was scarce. Funding was limited. Someone had to decide who got in.
What Happens When You Change the Room You Think In
There is a well-documented phenomenon in psychology called context-dependent memory. You remember things better in the environment where you learned them. The corollary is less discussed but more.
The Difference Between a Retreat and a Residency
A retreat implies withdrawal. You go somewhere to escape, rest, recover. The outside world is the problem. The retreat is the absence of it.
Creativity Is a Birthright, Not a Talent
You are a member of a species that invented language, mathematics, music, architecture, medicine, and space travel. Not because individual geniuses appeared from nowhere. Because creativity is the.
Why Constraints Produce Better Work Than Freedom
Give someone a blank canvas, unlimited time, and no instructions, and watch them freeze. Give someone a napkin, five minutes, and the instruction "draw your week" — and watch them produce something.
The Breakfast Table
The most valuable thing at AIR is not the studio. It is not the rooms. It is not the rice paddies or the river or the photo studio with the infinity cove.
The Myth of the Suffering Artist
Society loves the story of the artist who suffers. Van Gogh cutting off his ear. Hemingway drinking himself to death. Basquiat burning out at 27. The narrative is seductive: great art requires great.
The Question That Changed Everything
Before every guest arrives, we ask them one question: What are you working on?
10 Things We Learned in 9 Years
1. The community cannot be programmed. We tried themed dinners, structured introductions, collaborative projects. The best conversations always happened spontaneously — at breakfast, by the bonfire,.
Why the Best Ideas Come from Outside Your Field
The printing press was a wine press modified by a goldsmith. Velcro was invented by an engineer who went for a walk and noticed burrs sticking to his dog. The structure of DNA was visualized by a.
The Case for Working with Your Hands in a Digital Age
You spend eight to twelve hours a day moving a cursor across a glass surface. Your body is not involved. Your hands perform the same six-inch motion ten thousand times. Your brain operates in a.
What Nano Knows
Nano started at AIR as a cleaner. Now he runs the place.
How AIR Was Built — The Two-Year Renovation
The guesthouse on Jalan Seniman was not working. That is the polite version. The less polite version: it was a failing business in a location most people could not find, on a street too narrow for.
How to Start Before You Are Ready
You are waiting for the right moment. The right supplies. The right idea. The right amount of free time. The right level of skill. The right feeling.
The Room Remembers You
They come back. That is the thing we did not expect.
The Sewing Machine in the Studio
There is a sewing machine in the AIR studio that has been running almost every day for more than a decade. Not as a prop. Not as a workshop tool. As a production instrument.
Letters We Never Sent
One of the prompts in Unfuck Your Creativity asks guests to write a letter they will never send. To a person, a place, a version of themselves, a project they abandoned, a future they are afraid of..
The Bonfire
There is a bonfire area at AIR Ubud. It is not always lit. Nobody schedules it. Nano decides based on a logic only he understands — the weather, who is staying, the phase of the moon, his own mood.
What We Mean When We Say Both Are Valid
At AIR, there is a phrase we use more than any other. In the welcome message. In the how-it-works section. In conversation with guests who seem uncertain about what they are "supposed" to do.