Conscious, unconscious

A filmmaker once told me what is so magical about movies -- strangers are brought together in the same room, sitting in darkness and suddenly, find themselves pouring out emotions as if on cue -- tears, laughter, fear, horror. Sitting at Sangsang Madang last night, i felt the movie magic play out in the screening of the film Blue Seoul. For e.g., the scenes where William meets Won Young in a mirror & later in the street, one might simply read it as a mirror or an encounter with the past, but for others, you could hear gasp or giggle as they "detect" the "learned codes" that only students of Amy's "body movement" class would have known -- because of a shared experience.

I can't help but think of the second time Alex, Erica & group went up to fill time by re-enacting their rhythmic piece. I think we lost an opportunity then and there to create "shinmyong": if the "actors" had taken the chance to slow down and teach the "audience" how to perform the rhythmic clapping, might not all who were present be transformed from spectator into spec-actor? Imagine if all of us had learned the rhythmic clapping last night, forever in the future, wherever and whenever we meet one another from Sogang-SUNY programme, we could greet each other with this same rhythmic clapping that had become part of us, part of our collective consciousness.

Creating shinmyong is not merely encouraging audience to articulate certain sounds like olsheugo, or chohtuk, or shouting out numbers (even that has to come naturally, in this day and age, we hoot and whistle and say wow...we can't help it if the first sound that escapes our lips is not chohtuk!), it requires the spontaneity to invite spectators to participate in the act itself...

Although what happened last night was probably meant as a performance, not ritual, (and what a brilliant performance it was!) i think every performance has the potential to be transformed into a ritual whose aim is to remind audience that we are one "global holistic body" -- while we belong to different groups, there really shouldn't be distinction between "them" and "us".... we are all inter-related, connected by our presence here and now... To this end, it seems to me that films can be just as powerful as medium as theatre in creating shimnyong, or some kind of collective ecstasy. / yannling