Living Practice

2025
A performance devised through workshops

Shin Minjun: Living Practice is both a rehearsal for those who have endured the traumatic event of a family member’s death, and an attempt to approach the meaning of that death together—evoking it collectively so that we might live otherwise, with different attitudes in society.

At Shin Minjun’s invitation, four individuals— Minjun Shin, Yewon Choi, Yujin Lim , and Sewan Yoon —came together in a self-help circle. Their stories unfold through exhibition and performance. As “practitioners” and “performers” of Living Practice, they expand the unstable point where past and future collide into the grounding plane of the floor. That floor becomes the surface of art, a place where we can gather. Intimate, private experiences are brought forward and become something to be shared. Art carries the potential to heal.

Practice of Living explores the possibility of a mourning community. The one-to-one relationship between the deceased—whether by natural causes or suicide—and the bereaved transforms into a small community when four people with similar experiences come together. The documentation and shared acts of this community expand into each participant’s own “living practice.”

In this project, Minjun Shin reflects on how “personal yet social death”—a symptom of our contemporary society—might be thought of communally. Together with the practitioners, performers, and all who join, the project turns its gaze back on the “world” that drives people to death, in the hope that within it, we may choose another way of living.

* Excerpt from the preface “Walking into the Future” (Kim Solji) and Shin Minjun’s working note

Production Notes (Choreography, Mina Kang)
Standing, sitting, or lying in place, we dwell within the sensation of loss. Buried inside it, we allow ourselves to fully feel the present. Our movements begin from memories inscribed in each body. Personal experiences are shared through gestures; scars imprinted on our bodies are revealed and exchanged. In this process, experiences overlap, giving rise to new movements and new affects—marking the first step toward recovery. Each gesture carries remnants of trauma, yet from here we begin to create movements for living.

In this long-breathed journey we make together, body and mind are observed more deeply. From the individual to the collective, we recall what has been experienced in common: a world that carried on even after loss, a lonely funeral, grief that had to be hidden, and today’s self-help gathering. Individual memories converge here into a “shared circle.” The circle, fragile yet persistent, is sustained through the performers’ breathing and repeated without end.

Through the body, we remember deaths that were left unremembered, summoning the sensations of those days into the present. Yet we move forward, little by little. Holding arms and hands, refusing to leave one another behind, our bodies remain connected. From that time, we step forward again.

Production Notes (Music, Danpyunsun)
It must have been last autumn when Minjun and I first began speaking about his work. He had just presented it more fully for the first time in Tsushima, though it was still somewhat unformed. What I sensed, however, was his desire to refine his concerns into a more complete artistic shape by engaging in conversations with his peers.

The work he had shown—and the work he was preparing—stemmed from something deeply personal: the suicide of his younger brother. I told him I could never fully understand what that meant, not being the one directly involved. What I could do, instead, was to make the effort to listen and to hold that grief with care. In our wandering conversations, we found ourselves drawn to the keywords of rehearsal and practice.

At the time, I myself was weighed down by life. From the smallest domestic chores—though in truth, housework is never small—to the larger tasks of sustaining artistic work and making a living, nothing felt easy. All I could do was repeat things endlessly, trying to build habits that might sustain me.

Perhaps facing it as the bereaved, and approaching it as the outsider, are also both matters of repetition—of practicing endlessly, as if rehearsing. When that thought struck us, we gave this work its name: Practice of Living.

Practice of Living – Dance Score & Music
[Chapter 1]

With fabric covering, each performer takes position.
Sewan begins: roll, stand, reposition, stop.
Yujin begins: sway, vacuum, stop.
Minjun begins: stretch, curl, stop.
Yewon begins: push, extend, stop.
Yewon slowly moves to the center.
The others join one by one, forming a circle. After repeating the sequence twice, they hang the fabric on a pillar.

[Chapter 2]

All continue circling with breath, forward and back.
Yujin begins self-expression and returns: drifting as if a tree swaying.
Sewan begins: runs slowly around the circle.
Minjun begins: throw and extend.
Yewon begins: push and wipe.
Minjun and Yewon leave the circle, press against each other, and find balance.
Sewan and Yujin leave the circle, lean shoulders, turn, and sense each other’s balance.
Yewon pushes Minjun away with force; Minjun continues movements alone and shifts to the corner.
Sewan and Yujin support each other and move to the corner, then align.
Yewon gathers the fabric from the pillar, brings it to the corner, and lays it at our feet.

[Chapter 3]

All fix one foot as an axis and circle once around.
Yewon and Yujin turn one more round to the right, while Minjun and Hyojin turn one more round to the left.
Each begins their own movement:
- Minjun: let the head drop downward.
- Yewon: lift the leg and kick forward sharply.
- Yujin: raise the head and turn the neck.
- Sewan: lift the hand, pull, and turn 90 degrees.
All shift into Minjun’s movement.
In sequence—Yujin, Yewon, Minjun, Sewan—begin moving to different parts of the stage, blending gestures as they go.
Form a line before the Anniversary work. Order: Yujin → Yewon → Minjun → Sewan.
After the interview part of audio ends, take three steps back.
Each performs gestures twice; begin when the neighbor starts their first movement, so the gestures overlap.
Move leftward, then backward, taking the hand of the person beside you.
Move toward the fabric.
On arrival, place hands on each other’s shoulders, breathe three times, then begin swaying side to side.
Gradually expand the motion, creating waves through connected bodies.

Credit
- Performers / Practitioners: Minjun Shin, Sewan Yoon, Yujin Lim, Yewon Choi
- Music: Danpyunsun
- Choreography: Mina Kang
- Photo Document: Yeo-eun Yoon
- Video Document: Hez Studio