Behind story of REC_2016 , Danbi's Essay

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Record.

To keep the memory of this moment with my lover,

I hereby take pictures.

Write messages.

Record videos.

The best way for recording, Lifecasting. We are here to record us right at this moment.

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I have been planning for Lifecasting for a while. I thought I would do it as soon as I return from New York, but thanks to an exhibition that invited me I started the work in Korea after sudden return.

On the day of leaving New York, I did not expect the flight due to blizzards, but the plane miraculously took off toward the clouds free from the snow on its wings.

Contacting photographer Yejin to work with a day before, I directly went to my studio right after I got off the plane.

 Two day long work. The sculpture room in cold winter. Due to the cold air outside, I could not warm up the studio no matter how much I heated the stove.

For the Lifecasting performance, we had to shave the whole body.

Weird, weird experience. We shaved our body in a bit ridiculous but quite erotic mood. Seok, who finished shaving earlier than me, told me he thought why he was actually doing this. I could not stop laughing.

That's right. Why were we doing this?

I entered the bathroom with a razor without finding the answer. As if I were jumping on a risky rope, I shaved all my hairs on my body. Then I applied Vaseline all over the body again to protect the skin when taking off the plaster. Tying up my hair, I even applied Vaseline on my scalp worrying about my hair pulled out. I don't want to apply Vaseline on my body again. That sticky and heavy feeling cause me dizziness.

 We began to lay out body on the cold plaster. The worker said it was his first time to do casting on two people during his 15 years of career and told us to let him know if it was too tough for us. Another sculpture artist once had told me we would die, and I realized it was really true as time passed.

While we were lying on the cold floor, the freezing plaster began to tighten out body as it got dry. Lying down, which I thought would be easy to keep, almost killed my back and our legs crossed up were not strong enough to support the heavy Vaseline due to the slipperiness of Vaseline. I had difficulty with controlling my face and I could not hold my rough breath anymore. Only the half of my face was covered by the plaster, so I could see his face. 'It's alright. It's almost finished.' He kept whispering in my ears.

I was pillowing my head on his arm, and I found his arm with a bruise after we took off the plaster. His legs under mine must have been painful, too. Bearing even bigger pains, he kept whispering to me. I was so thankful and sorry to you.

After 6 hours of working, we headed for the studio again the next day. On the second day, I was so terrified that I was heavy-footed. He just held my hand without a word. I was the one who planned the work and it was our work. There was no one I could complain to. However, I was certainly terrified. No one would ever understand us unless they have experienced their whole body hardened.

On the second day, we put a cast outside and filled the empty space inside. While filling the space, we passed out. I didn’t even notice myself fainting. He woke me up and said we fainted together. It was horrible that we still had things to do. To the beat of a new age song played in the studio, I counted time.

After all our work was finished, we cast our face only with silicon to keep it ourselves and it was very easy. I heard there were some artists who had a seizure while casting their face, but it was nothing to us who had the whole body casting.

We were actually planning to do Lifecasting in every 5 years, but this REC_2016 tells me I should think about the plan once again. Should I just do the face casting?

One of my friends said ‘so you actually recorded the process of being one’ which I thought was so beautiful.

Staring at each other’s eye and enduring the pain, I really felt like we were one. I would never forget this feeling.

A record in January 2016.