Module 07
Why the Project Stayed Unreleased
The archive of obstruction: soft gatekeeping, procedural refusal, and temporal drag
Overview
- HashimaXR was never released — not because it failed technically, but because institutional conditions made critical interpretation impossible
- The project encountered soft gatekeeping — obstruction through procedural mechanisms rather than explicit censorship
- Temporal drag — extended timelines that made the project unviable — was itself a governance technique
- The accumulated record of these obstacles constitutes an archive of obstruction that reveals how heritage governance actually operates
- Non-release was the ethically responsible choice when the alternative was publication under conditions requiring erasure
This final module treats the project's non-release not as a failure but as a finding. The obstacles HashimaXR encountered — the patterns of delay, conditional cooperation, and eventual withdrawal — become evidence of the very dynamics the project sought to critique.
Project Timeline: From Development to Non-Release
HashimaXR was developed between 2020 and 2025. The project achieved substantial technical milestones before institutional conditions made release impossible.
Project Launch & Initial Partnerships
Development begins with funding secured. Initial partnerships established with heritage institutions and local authorities based on the project's technical ambitions — the visual reconstruction, the immersive experience, the preservation of the island's appearance.
Technical Milestones Achieved
Detailed reconstruction of the island as it appeared in the early 1970s completed. Narrative systems for presenting multiple perspectives developed. In-game archive of historical documents implemented. Prototype completed and demonstrated at workshops in Tokyo and Nagasaki.
Institutional Pressure Mounts
When the project's critical framing becomes clear, stakeholder enthusiasm cools. Demands for "balance" begin. Access restrictions imposed. Landing permits for reference photography refused. Review processes extend beyond expected timelines.
Conditional Support Withdrawn
A potential key stakeholder proposes a non-disparagement clause that would render large portions of the narrative off-limits. Partnership negotiations stall without formal rejection. Funding cycles approach their end without resolution.
Ethical Decision: Non-Release
The project team halts development rather than release under conditions requiring erasure of coerced labor history. The project's unfinished status becomes an object of analysis in its own right — the archive of obstruction.
How Obstruction Works
The obstacles that prevented HashimaXR's release operated through two related mechanisms. Neither involved explicit censorship or formal rejection. Instead, obstruction was achieved through procedures that appeared individually reasonable while accumulating into terminal obstruction.
Soft Gatekeeping
Obstruction through procedural mechanisms rather than overt censorship
Unlike hard gatekeeping — explicit prohibition, legal action, formal rejection — soft gatekeeping works through:
- Conditional access: Permissions granted in principle but made practically impossible
- Bureaucratic delay: Extended review processes that exhaust time and resources
- Shifting goalposts: Requirements that change as they are satisfied
- Reputational pressure: Informal signals that proceeding will damage relationships
- Resource starvation: Withdrawal of support that makes continuation unviable
Temporal Drag
Extending timelines until projects become unviable
In academic and cultural production, time is a finite resource. Projects have funding cycles, personnel commitments, and technological windows. HashimaXR experienced temporal drag across multiple dimensions:
- Institutional review processes that extended beyond funding cycles
- Partnership negotiations that never concluded
- Access requests that remained unanswered for years
- Feedback loops requiring repeated revision without clear endpoint
The effect was to make the project continuously "in progress" without ever being releasable — a status maintained indefinitely while appearing to represent normal institutional process. Soft gatekeeping is difficult to document precisely because it leaves no clear record of refusal.
Central Concept
The Archive of Obstruction
The accumulated pattern of these interactions — the delays, conditions, and withdrawals — constitutes what this learning resource calls the archive of obstruction. This is not merely evidence of what happened to one project. It is evidence of how heritage governance operates.
Non-Release as Ethical Choice
The project team faced a choice between two unsatisfactory options. They were not equivalent.
✗ Release Under Conditions
Publish HashimaXR with stakeholder-demanded modifications:
- Replicate the interpretive silence UNESCO had criticized
- Legitimize the "balance" framework treating documented history as disputed opinion
- Lend technical sophistication to an inadequate interpretation
- Foreclose the project serving as evidence of obstruction
✓ Refuse to Release
Halt development and preserve the project as evidence:
- Maintain scholarly integrity of the interpretation
- Treat the project's trajectory as data
- Document how heritage governance actually works
- Make the archive of obstruction available for analysis
Non-release preserved the possibility of treating the project's trajectory as evidence — demonstrating that the interpretive constraints UNESCO criticized in physical heritage extend to digital heritage production. The mechanisms are the same: periodization that excludes inconvenient history, demands for "balance" that privilege authorized narratives, procedural obstacles that achieve censorship without explicit prohibition.
What This Means
HashimaXR's non-release demonstrates that digital heritage faces the same constraints as physical heritage sites. The archive of obstruction documents, in granular detail, how institutions respond when digital media threatens to make alternative interpretations visible.
This is not a story of failure. It is a story of how certain kinds of success were made impossible — and of what we can learn from the impossibility.
🎓 Core Sequence Complete
You've completed the eight-module core sequence on contested heritage, institutional obstruction, and the archive of silence. You now have the analytical tools to recognise how heritage governance operates — not just at Hashima, but at contested sites worldwide.
Project Reflections
The project team has published open-access essays reflecting on the design philosophy and institutional constraints encountered. For the full archive of scholarly perspectives, see Scholarly Perspectives.
Key Takeaways
- Non-release is a finding, not a failure. The archive of obstruction reveals how heritage governance actually operates.
- Soft gatekeeping works through procedural mechanisms. Delays, withdrawn permissions, and conditional support replace explicit censorship.
- Temporal drag achieves what refusal cannot. Extending timelines until projects become unviable is a governance technique.
- Institutional conditions made critical interpretation impossible. The choice was erasure or non-release.
- Refusing to release under these conditions was ethically responsible. Publication would have legitimized the interpretive constraints that necessitated it.
📝 Cite This Module
Gerteis, Christopher. "Module 07: Why the Project Stayed Unreleased." HashimaXR Learning Resource. SOAS University of London, 2025–2026. https://hashimaxr.netlify.app/learn/module-07/.
For other formats, see How to Cite · Full Bibliography