Documentary filmmakers typically determine their own “position” before they begin shooting. They choose either to actively engage with their subjects by asking questions, or to minimize their presence—like a fly on the wall—merely observing and recording events as they unfold. I, too, have followed this general approach, usually deciding between these two options before starting a shoot. However, a series of rather mysterious experiences I had over the past two years challenged this habitual way of working. I intend to share the stories of those two extraordinary encounters.
Looking back, these mysterious experiences began in rather unremarkable ways. They were completely unexpected, accidental occurrences. Two years ago, Mu:p—an artistic duo consisting of Hyeong-jun Cho and Minsun Son—suggested that I document their work. The subjects of the documentation were to be an upcoming educational program, its participants, and Mu:p as the organizing body. Beyond that, nothing was firmly set. All I knew in advance was that the program was titled Forest 1.4 and that it would take the form of a performance-making workshop. We vaguely agreed that if enough footage accumulated, it could eventually be made into a documentary. A few days later, the first shoot was scheduled.
Forest 1.4 is divided into two parts: the Planning Phase and the Practical Phase. Participants may join only the Planning Phase, but the Practical Phase is open exclusively to those who have completed the Planning Phase. A select group is chosen from those who apply through a public call, and the program is run in cohorts. The sessions take place at Studio Open Set, Mu:p’s workspace, where they have also staged several performances in the past. Each cohort typically includes between seven and ten participants, and the program consists of four sessions, each lasting about four hours. This is the objective description of Forest 1.4. (Perhaps the camera would agree.)
With its high ceiling and large rectangular shape, the space is mostly empty—there are no desks or chairs. Participants sit in a circle on the floor. You can see their tension and anticipation, the way they’re aware of one another while also sensing how they themselves are being seen. One wall has four large windows that let in natural light, ideal for filming. Minsun Son smiles brightly as she explains the program, laughing out loud from time to time. Hyeong-jun Cho’s gentle smile helps ease the participants’ nerves. Over the course of four hours, they ask and answer questions about one another. This is the scene from the first day. This is my subjective account. (Perhaps the camera's, too.)
Objectivity and subjectivity are matters of perspective. The subject becomes the agent of interpretation, actively engaging with and resolving the issues at hand. Mu:p describes Forest 1.4 as “an educational process that overturns the conventional practice of performance-making—where participants are assigned predetermined roles—and instead allows a group’s own structural characteristics to organically shape the form of the performance.” Typically, performances are divided into performers and non-performers, those on stage and those behind it—a division that often reflects a power dynamic between director and cast. The performer moves their body in response to the director’s instructions. Mu:p declares an ambitious aim to “overturn the conventions” of performance through this program, but the way Forest 1.4 does so is quite simple: through speaking and listening, with an added layer of imaginative fiction.
The reason participants take turns asking each other questions is to explore one another’s names and abilities. Naming and the discovery of abilities are among the few essential requirements that drive Forest 1.4. To uncover these, participants continuously engage in cycles of speaking and listening. Abilities include things like controlling another person’s mind, freely drifting through time, or possessing transcendent powers. Creating fictional characters with such traits might seem childish, but it naturally leads to the act of naming. Names like Butler, Foster, Chandler, and Shepherd emerge, and participants begin to call each other by these names. Using the given name is a rule here.
Roger Caillois, in Man, Play and Games, describes play as a system of rules, explaining that rules in play are both arbitrary and binding promises. If these promises are broken, the game ends immediately. Forest 1.4 is a form of mimetic play. According to Caillois, mimicry is a state of temporarily accepting a fictional, closed world. However, Forest 1.4 doesn’t perfectly fit this definition of mimicry. While mimicry often involves wearing a mask and acting as a particular character or pretending to be someone else, participants in Forest 1.4 act as the “me” seen through others’ eyes. They use different names but are asked to imitate a version of themselves woven by others’ perspectives. It is a process of exploring somewhere between the self and this constructed identity.
At the same time, participants answer other’s questions, experiencing what it means to face this objectified version of themselves.
This state can be described as a kind of mental vertigo—a moment of ambiguous self-exploration. There is a conflict and rapid transition between the fictionally invoked object and the subject. In this sense, participants gradually enter a state of ilinx. Ilinx, one of the categories of play identified by Caillois, refers to a pleasurable panic—a physical play involving rapid spinning, sliding, or other sensations of dizziness. The participants designing the performance seem to be entering this preliminary state of ilinx through their bodily experiences.
Earlier, I mentioned a mysterious experience. That experience was witnessing the participants of Forest 1.4 entering a preliminary state of ilinx, during which the recording camera itself becomes part of the play. Usually, a camera either captures carefully planned scenes or unexpectedly seizes moments that unfold independently of the camera operator’s will. But within this state of ilinx—a space that is fictional yet not entirely fictional, an empty in-between—the camera exists somewhere between being an object, a recording machine, and a subject, the operator who controls it.
This phenomenon can be said to have occurred toward the end of the second cohort of Forest 1.4. In the case of the second cohort, the Planning Phase and the Practical Phase took place simultaneously, and it happened during a kind of test performance held in the Practical Phase.
The camera is installed near the entrance of the space to capture the entire performance area. As the test performance begins, participants busily engage in actions that suit their assigned roles. Some write something on paper, some lie down, and others jump in circles. Then, one participant walks toward the camera and presses the record button. The recording stops. A few minutes later, the participant who left the space returns and presses the record button again. The camera—and the camera operator—had been present all along, never assigned any specific role. Perhaps the way Forest 1.4 overturns conventional practices isn’t through deliberate connections among the elements present, but through a collective state of play that emerges as all these elements intermingle.
