Video Performance, Single channel video, 10:38 mins Summer Solstice at Vila Romana Florence
The video performance is based on a re-exploration and re-creation of a 12-movement Korean national gymnastics score (Gukminchejo)—a mass physical training regime rooted in Japanese colonial-era radio calisthenics and perpetuated through South Korea's postwar dictatorships, the Saemaul Movement, and decades of state-led bodily discipline. The 'breathing' movements and the garden's own rhythms—branches swaying, insects crawling, leaves trembling—mix with each other and are cooked on screen, fermenting the disciplinary rhythm embedded in the score. Here, the high summer sun deepens the shadows and acts as a force that fuels the dance of fermentation.
The performance is based on two kinds of collaboration: with the non-human species inhabiting the garden, and with a sound artist. Drawing on the movements and stories of each non-human performer that I observed and recorded, the sound artist choreographed violin gestures to create a distinct sound source for each species. Light and the camera obscura-like installation function as a tool that blurs the boundary between human and non-human performers, making their encounter performative.