Permission to Trespass (2025) is the second case study in Dakota’s ongoing project, Tools for Speculative Archaeology (2023–present). The project examines the ethical implications of archaeology beyond the mortal realm, focusing on the excavation of tombs and the appropriation of unearthed artifacts. Adopting the persona of a speculative archaeologist, she asks: What if archaeology, at its core, is an act of trespassing into the realm of the dead?

During her residency at GlogauAIR, Berlin, Dakota developed Permission to Trespass, furthering this critique by shifting her focus from restitution—as explored in the first case study on the “tomb-quelling document”—to the very premise of archaeological excavation: the question of access. What does it mean to enter tombs—spaces not intended for the living—without invitation? Who grants permission when the agency of the dead remains unacknowledged?

The project draws on a field trip Dakota and her collaborator, Hui Lin, conducted in Leshan, Sichuan, where they entered the unattended Eastern Han cliff tombs (yámù) without authorization and performed LiDAR scans of the interiors. To retrace this uncanny act of trespassing, the Open Studio was conceived as a fragmented field log, weaving together notes, drawings, and on-site footage and LiDAR animations projected onto curtains printed with barricade imagery. The studio—also her bedroom during the residency—was transformed into a ghostly tomb chamber, where a suspended line of phantom archives cuts open a cross-section that peers into the underworld, layered across millennia and inscribed into the registers of its bureaucracy.