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Something has shifted in how people come to understand the world, and it happened fast enough that most of us are still catching up.
More people than ever are claiming the right to name their own experience — their own histories, identities, beliefs. More voices, more truths that don't resolve neatly into one.
There's no longer a shared way to understand the world that everyone can stand inside. Every identity comes packaged with a label — picked up and used to sort people, recruit them, turn what someone believes about themselves into a lever someone else can pull.
How do we reimagine the way we understand the world?
The chance to choose how you understand the world, rather than simply inherit it.
This is the thesis of Issue 0.
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For fourteen years, Lu Renjie has built a complete creative system rooted in three of China's foundational texts — the I Ching, the Yellow Emperor's Classic, and the Classic of Mountains and Seas. The system now includes 809 sculptures, an eight-meter mythological map, 3,407 totem designs, and 420 groups of ancient script he redesigned for present use — built mostly alone, across a stretch of time most people never get to spend on one question.
His work doesn't answer the question Issue 0 is asking. It's one demonstration of what fourteen years of undivided attention can produce.
"I am not skilled enough to claim I have understood these texts. I only enter the Way through what I do best — painting, ceramics, design. I hope to cast a brick to attract jade, to find fellow travelers."
He wants to find people who think this way too — people willing to sit down and actually explore a question together, not perform an answer. He wants a space for free, equal discussion: people willing to debate hard, but only to understand why, not to win. People drawn to the origin of things. People looking, like him, for companions.
This is Lu Renjie opening a question, not answering one. Issue 0 exists to gather whoever wants to explore it with him.
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Some questions arrive before the world has a place for them — questions about the future, about what matters to everyone who comes next, not just whoever happens to be carrying them first.
They sit inside one person for years — tested alone, carried in private, visible only to whoever happens to be close enough to notice. Too personal for academia. Too slow for a pitch. Too serious for casual conversation. The question has real force, but no place yet where that force can be met, challenged, or built on.
Ausna is built for that moment — right before a thesis either gets flattened into something smaller than it is, or finds the people who can carry it forward.
Ausna is where a thesis finds its people and becomes visible to the world.
It becomes real when the right people enter it — co-creator traces, a public presentation, a published artifact. People meet here through contribution, not introduction — through human authority: the character, wisdom, and experience someone has actually lived, rather than their résumé.
It is not a conference, where people arrive with finished results to perform authority. Not an incubator, where every idea gets pushed prematurely into a product. Not a networking event, where people trade usefulness instead of understanding. It is the fragile, necessary room before all of that — when a thesis has enough force to gather people, but still needs a circle willing to think inside it first.
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Issue 0 runs evenings and weekends — something real to do with the hours outside your usual work. You meet the people in the room through what you make together, not what you say about yourself.
Sun Jun 28 — Briefing. Lu Renjie opens the thesis in depth: where it comes from, why it matters now, what kind of people it needs. Co-creators meet each other and the platform for the first time. (8–9 PM PDT)
Jun 29–Jul 4 & Jul 6–11 — Co-create. Nightly co-working rooms, co-creator-only. Each person works on their trace and exchanges questions and material with the rest of the circle. (8–11 PM PDT)
Sat Jul 5 — Mid-program gathering. The full circle meets. Each co-creator shares where they stand — the first time everyone sees the thesis taking different shapes.
Fri Jul 11 — Trace submission.
Sat Jul 12 — Roundtable. Structured exchange across all traces, transcribed into the final artifact.
Sun Jul 13 — Public Expo. Lu Renjie and co-creators present to an invited audience. Recorded. The thesis meets the world with its circle already around it.
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Lu Renjie
Lu Renjie opens the thesis. Over fourteen years, he has built the Shan Hai Jing Series — 809 sculptures, an eight-meter mythological map, 3,407 totem designs, 420 groups of redesigned ancient script, spanning ceramics, painting, and a worldbuilding system that extends into the metaverse. His work has entered the collections of Jackie Chan, James Cameron, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and others, and been broadcast nationally across China. He works under the name sanmianrulai (三面如来).
Allen Chen
Allen hosts the Issue and founded Ausna. His path runs from art exhibitions in Florida, to AI research at a top CS lab (NAACL, EMNLP), to touring with two bands, to leaving college for Minerva University to study collective intelligence. Ausna is the throughline: helping people gather around what they actually believe.
Hanzhou
Hanzhou co-hosts the cohort and co-leads the editorial process that turns Issue 0 into a published artifact. He holds an MA in Literature from Waseda University and directs both 706 Tokyo, a youth humanities community space, and ODY CELL Independent Bookstore — bringing both institutions in as partners for Issue 0.
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The people who gather around an Ausna Issue don't share a background. They share an orientation.
They carry questions that feel too large for the spaces available — drawn to origin, to what underlies what seems obvious. They read across disciplines because their questions don't stop at one.
They want to be around people who can be seen through what they've actually lived and thought — not through credentials or connections. And they want to see others that way too.
They believe that the right circle of people, taking a serious question seriously, arrives somewhere none of them could have reached alone.
You do not need expertise in any particular tradition, system, or field. You need a real question, a way of noticing, and the conviction to make something out of it. We are looking for people from art, technology, research, design, philosophy, and fields that resist easy labels — united by serious curiosity rather than credentials.
What you bring: your own way of reading the world, set beside Lu Renjie's.
What you get:
Your work published in the Issue — in your own voice, on your angle of the thesis. Permanent.
A circle of six to eight people chosen for how they think, not who they know. Met through what you made.
A public moment at the expo. The thesis meets the world with a circle already around it.
No application, no invitation.
If this thesis calls you, follow it. Contributors join the open circle — watching the co-creation unfold in the group chats, attending public events, sharing what belongs here. Contributions are reviewed by the circle and brought in where they fit.
What you bring: anything worth knowing — questions, references, perspectives — that belongs in this conversation.
What you get:
Access to the group chats and public events as the circle works.
A live view of the co-creation before it becomes a published artifact.
A path in — co-creator registration stays open while the program runs. Contributors who go deep can apply if any spots still open.
To follow:
Issue 0 is where Ausna's format gets tested for the first time. We are looking for more people to be inside that process.
System Designer
We're not just building a program — we're designing a system. From operations to platform to community, we're building the infrastructure behind the world's first circle that runs on human conviction. Join us if you love building with shared ambition.
Graphic Designer
Lead the visual identity of Ausna — concept and brand, a design system that carries into everything that follows, and the specific materials for Issue 0: open call, expo, and published artifact. Ausna's visual language is being formed now.
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Co-creators and team — fill out the interest form. We read everything and respond personally.
Contributors — no form, no application. Just come in.
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Issue 0 · Cohort A · Jun 28 – Jul 13, 2026