Island of
Ganghwado

Team A · A.N.D. Theatre, walking the first day’s route ahead

A.N.D. Theatre walked the first day’s route, from the Ganghwa-gun Sports Centre to Yongdang Dondae. Thanks to the warm weather, we moved along lightly, as if on a stroll. With every step along the trail, we walked on autumn.

After this light walk of the route, we cooked and ate lunch at Space And, then closed the day’s rehearsal by writing out by hand the texts we will read aloud during the journey: Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, Wisława Szymborska’s poem “The Silence of Plants”, and Ham Min-bok’s essay “Hanging the Moon’s Tide Calendar on the Wall”.

Team A · Teatringestazione, the day before the first funeral

We are preparing Giovanni’s headpiece for the funerals. How will the hanji paper thread and the silver thread change? Little by little, it is taking shape.

Tomorrow is the first day, with Seomseom’s funeral. There are still a few things to talk through, so after finishing the whole theatre set-up, we go over the details.

Team A · Sononochi, walking the mudflat path of the 8th

We see off today’s sun walking the mudflat path we will walk with the audience on Sunday the 8th, taking over from the final rite of Teatringestazione’s funeral. In case it rains, we also try making images with an umbrella.

We have lost count of how many times we have walked this path at the same hour. The sun, the clouds, the wind and the flocks of birds crossing the sky show a different landscape every day. What will the landscape of that hour look like when we see it with the audience?

Without words, in silence, how can we move the audience? We share ideas and try them out.

Team B · Orang Orang Drum Theatre rehearsing with collaborator Loïc

On our first day, during a walk around the neighbourhood, we met Loïc Gendry. We decided to work together and have met several times since.

Today we visited Odu Dondae, the performance venue, together to settle where the performance will take place, and then rehearsed at the Void Theatre.

We look forward to hearing what sounds Orang Orang Drum Theatre’s instruments and Loïc’s electronic instruments will make together.

Team B · Together and apart at Heewarae

We gathered at Heewarae and carried on our work for Looking Out for All @Dondae. In the same space, each person’s work flowed quietly side by side.

Shaw En edited the animation and made props for the performance. Heewarae prepared the installation. Narae copied the records of the past days onto hanji, and Toto wove branches and weeds together. Orang Orang Drum Theatre talked through the structure of the performance and discussed with Toto how to make the props. Heng sketched something to hand to the audience and checked in on everyone’s progress.

As the sun went down, we came together again to check the structure of the work one last time and to talk through the schedule and what is left to do.

Team A · Walking through the three days together

Sononochi, A.N.D. Theatre and Teatringestazione gathered with the production and tech teams to walk through Team A’s three days together. Following the flow of time, we imagined how A.N.D. Theatre, setting off on their three-day journey on Friday, will meet the other works on the road and at the funerals, picturing a time that has not yet come but soon will.

On the 8th, after Team B’s programme at Odu Dondae, everyone meets at the third funeral outside the convenience store, and from there the afternoon runs as one continuous flow to the final programme. Like passing the baton in a relay, how can each work be connected to the next? Following the dramaturgical structure, we discussed how each work could carry the one before it and take it further.

Afterwards, we prepared the set-up at the Void Theatre, where the funerals’ final installation performance will take place.

Team A · A.N.D. Theatre, over Gilsangsan

A.N.D. Theatre explored a route over Gilsangsan mountain. Starting from a small zoo in Onsu-ri and walking up to just below the summit, we sensed the mountains of Ganghwa with our bodies.

Rotting tree stumps, heaps of dry leaves, trees that had let go of their leaves and kept only their branches. It was a walk long enough to sense the time in which nature disappears.

What kinds of disappearance will we meet over the next three days?

Team B · Orang Orang Drum Theatre, from Donggeombuk Dondae to the Void Theatre

Today we went back to Donggeombuk Dondae for the second time. We collected branches there to make props for our performance. We also returned to the bridge that inspired us, where an old sashimi restaurant stands closed.

Then we came back to the Void Theatre to work on the performance. How do we translate our physical experience and our thoughts into a performance language? Each of us worked with a different keyword, and we began to put them together. We are also excited to work with our dramaturg, Kok Heng Leun, as he organises our material and shares his point of view.

The piece is cooking right now. We can’t wait to see it appear soon.

Team B · Chew Shaw En, the last day at Areumdaun Local Children’s Centre

It was a lovely, lovely third and final day with the three kids from Areumdaun Local Children’s Centre. Siwan, Minkyung and Yohan were on fire. We rode the momentum from the previous two days, were very productive and laughed a lot with each other. The kids came straight in, went to their work stations and got to work by themselves.

After each session, I try to take in what they have said and created, and prepare new translated facilitation plans or a creative response to them. For the third session I had edited what they did in the second, so I could give them a taste of what the final edit might look like.

Collaboration and communication between the adults and kids became more of a flow today, and we bounced ideas off each other and built on them. We needed to wrap things up, so we audio-recorded everybody’s story of disappearance, and keeping quiet during a recording proved to be a ‘challenge’, hahaha.

Many thanks to Heewarae for working on this with us, and to everyone who helped make it possible and kept the whole process as smooth and comfortable as it could be.

Team A · A.N.D. Theatre, from Yongdang Dondae to Space And

We scouted the route of Walking as Witnesses to Disappearance from Yongdang Dondae to Space And. At Yongdang Dondae we met Orang Orang Drum Theatre, and together we explored the openings through which the audience might step into the walk.

Boyz played the sape. Zyee and Damien added melodies to his playing. Minji learned from Boyz, step by step, how to play the sape. After parting from Orang Orang Drum Theatre at Yongdang Dondae, we set off walking again.

Team A · Sononochi, a meal with Keunnamu Camphill

Sononochi was invited by Hyunsook, the owner of the Gukja & Jugeok bookshop, to prepare a Japanese meal for the residents and staff of Keunnamu Camphill, a nearby community.

They cooked nikujaga, a Japanese stew of meat and potatoes, and onigiri (rice balls), which they shared alongside a variety of Korean banchan. The meal brought together Japanese and Korean food cultures, creating an opportunity to connect through food and conversation. For Sononochi, which values the experience of doing things together, this was a particularly meaningful and enriching time.

In the afternoon, they rehearsed at Gukja & Jugeok. Later, they interviewed Hyunsook, listening to more of her stories and experiences. In the evening, they shared a meal prepared by the teams from Singapore and Malaysia, together with members of the local community.

Team A · Teatringestazione, at the house of the second funeral

Anna and Giovanni, who are preparing Good Mourning, are getting ready for three funerals held in life. At the house where the second funeral will take place, they recorded the sounds of his everyday life and rehearsed, walking step by step through the time that will unfold on the 7th.

They met him by chance on their visit last year, drinking and singing together and sharing part of his life, and that encounter led them to make his funeral together. The hours spent talking about good mourning and a good death have built up, and now they wait for the 7th.

Team B · At Sanmaeul High School

The students were amazingly generous in sharing their drumming skills and their knowledge of their drums with Orang Orang Drum Theatre. We learned some basic rhythmic patterns and steps from them. They told us how grateful they were for an international exchange, a very rare opportunity for them.

In turn, we showed them our way of drumming in Malaysia, and we improvised together with instruments from different cultural backgrounds.

“Eolssu, eolssigu, jota!” is what we remember most from all they shared with us.

Team A · Sononochi

Following their Saturday performance at the bookshop Gukja & Jugeok, A Homeland We Cannot Return To, and a Woman Who Shares the Seasons Here, Sononochi are preparing a Sunday performance set within the vast landscape of the mudflat. Today, for as long as the sun was up, they walked and walked along the mudflat on the shore behind the Void Theatre. Where the landscape and the performers meet, where should the audience be? They are shaping the work around how the performers and the landscape will sit together in the audience’s view.

Team A · Teatringestazione

In the morning, Anna and Giovanni met Seomseom to interview and record him as they shape his funeral. If, after you die, you appeared in the dreams of the person you love most and the person you hate most, what would you say to them? What is the legacy you leave behind? They then went through the technical needs and materials with the tech team. In the late afternoon they met Hwanggu and talked through their plan for a funeral as performance, and late at night they met the owner of the 7-Eleven again to share the basic structure. The three funeral performances are slowly coming into focus.

Team B · At the Ganghwa Welfare Centre for People with Disabilities

We met staff at the Ganghwa Welfare Centre for People with Disabilities and talked about the changes they have seen and their experiences of care while working alongside disabled people. It was striking that in every community, when people talk about what they miss now that it has disappeared, pumasi (sharing labour) and jeong (affection) come up. We also introduced Orang Orang Drum Theatre’s farming and way of life, and talked about ways of living in other places.

One staff member told us about her grandfather, who made sochang cotton cloth for nearly seventy years. Seeing no future in it, the family closed the factory, but later sochang began to attract attention again as a cultural resource of Ganghwa. She found meaning in the fact that her grandfather’s life’s work is now recognised as part of Ganghwa’s cultural heritage, yet wished the change had come a little sooner. Today, she added, whether in farming or any other industry, it seems hard to survive without a connection to culture.

Team B · At Areumdaun Local Children’s Centre

Shaw and Heewarae worked with three children on their stories of disappearance. The children first focused on writing their stories, then moved on to making puppets of the characters in each story. This was the first day of a three-day process, and we were deeply moved by the complexity and depth of feeling in their stories. While the stories themselves are about loss, our time together was lively and fun. The kids really enjoyed themselves, and so did we. We are looking forward to seeing them again tomorrow!

Team A · Sharing each team’s work

After a day of rest on Saturday, we gathered in the afternoon to share how each team’s work has developed. A.N.D. Theatre has gathered what they will read, listen to and talk about with the audience over three days of walking across Ganghwa. The audience will encounter texts A.N.D. Theatre has met over the past five years of their work, on a journey to find questions of their own to carry with them. Sononochi walked around the mudflats behind the Void Theatre and found inspiration quite different from last year. They are now thinking about how to meet the audience as the sun goes down on Sunday evening, and how performers should exist within the landscape. Anna and Giovanni are giving dramaturgical shape to the funerals of three citizens. Our discussions will continue on where these three funerals, following one after another, will arrive, and on how we will meet the audience from Sunday afternoon until after dark.

Team B · Autumn harvest festival at Dogam Ppuri Farm

We went to the autumn harvest festival held at Dogam Ppuri Farm. After a delicious lunch of beef-head soup with rice, boiled pork and kimchi, we watched the street parade of the Neobeol pungmul troupe. We ate with people from Yangdo-myeon, poured makgeolli for each other and said hello. At 2 pm the harvest thanksgiving rite began. Rice, fruit, honey and many other foods the villagers had grown themselves were laid out. We bowed, giving thanks for the harvest and wishing everyone well. During the rite, Shaw danced joyfully with the village children to the pungmul rhythms, and Damien joined in, echoing the cheers of “Eolssigu~!” and “Jalhanda~!”. We also saw the curious sight of the produce from the ritual table becoming prizes in a lucky draw, though no one from Team B won. The rain stopped, and we walked back to our lodging over the damp ground.

Everyone · A dinner we each brought

Working in two teams meant we rarely saw each other, and the week went by with everyone missing one another. Tonight was a night to share the food we had each prepared. In Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Italy alike, cooking and sharing good food is an important part of culture. We wrapped up our meetings quickly, cooked in our own spaces, and arrived at the Void Theatre one team at a time. A prawn curry by Heng and Damien, a Singapore–Malaysia collaboration; Shaw’s vegan curry; A.N.D. Theatre’s bibimbap; Giovanni’s peppers made from his grandmother’s recipe; Kyoto-style fish cakes; Yonrimog’s homemade chicken porridge; a chive and seafood pancake fried by hand; kimchi stew that had apparently been simmered in the car… and, from those too busy to cook, a carefully prepared chicken dish, budae-jjigae, fruit and snacks. Even as we shared food carrying each other’s cultures, the meeting for next week went on.

Team A · Individual research and scouting the day 1 route

Team A spent the day on individual research. In the morning A.N.D. Theatre walked the route from Ganghwa Bus Terminal to Space And, thinking about how to welcome the audience and how our questions might reach them as we walk together. Afterwards we gathered at Space And, chose the plays we want to read aloud along the way, read them together, and collected questions that might let the audience sense disappearance moment by moment.

Team A · Sononochi at Gukja & Jugeok

Sononochi spent the day at the Gukja & Jugeok bookshop. In the morning they walked through the bookshop and its garden, exploring the space and beginning to shape the flow of the work. As they walked, they recalled what the owner had shared in our interview, and kept returning to the sensations they had felt in this garden and to their own thoughts and feelings about disappearing. Letting those memories and sensations guide them, they spent time simply being present in the place. In the afternoon they discussed the concept, the audience’s journey and the overall outline of the project with the producer team. For dinner, the owner kindly gave them tomatoes and fresh basil; Sononochi cooked and we all shared the meal. With a translation app between us, we talked about the things we love and our everyday lives, finding ways to reach each other beyond language.

Team A · Yonrimog, a dondae and the sound walk route

Imagining a performance at Huae Dondae near the Void Theatre, Yonrimog went looking for the right spot. Entry into the fort is prohibited, though, so we will need to find a way. If getting inside proves difficult, perhaps the outer wall itself could become the stage. Yonrimog then walked around the Gukja & Jugeok bookshop and is settling on this area for the sound walk. Dead trees, a crumbling mud-brick house, a cattle shed fallen silent, an abandoned greenhouse, trees smothered in vines and even graves: this route holds many stories.

Team B · With Loïc at Cafe Keunnamu

At Cafe Keunnamu we met Loïc, a French guitarist, and talked about his life and the changes he has noticed living on Ganghwa. Comparing farming in Korea and France, we discussed the hardships farmers face and how agricultural policy shapes their lives. We also talked about the water deer losing their habitat to development, and the dogs Loïc has seen disappear on Ganghwa. Loïc spoke with regret about apartment blocks hiding the mountains and old buildings vanishing fast, and was struck by Korean housing culture, so fond of apartments that the country has been called an “apartment republic.” The conversation turned naturally to how cities and nature are changing, and to ways of expressing disappearing things through sound. What sounds will today’s conversation lead to?

Team B · Choosing Odu Dondae

The team chose Odu Dondae as the site of the project and talked about how to bring each person’s work together, from installations made with weeds, thread and hanji paper to music and stop-motion animation. Looking back on the people we have met on Ganghwa, we focused on the fading of nature and of community warmth. Going beyond what has already disappeared, we widened the question to how we notice what is disappearing now, and what we can do about it. As something is disappearing right now, what can we do? How can we care for one another? Could Odu Dondae, once a post for watching for danger from outside, become a place where we look out for and care for each other in a crisis? With these thoughts we planned another visit to Odu Dondae, talked about how to work separately and together, and closed the week.

Team A · Sononochi’s work and a dramaturgy workshop

Today we spent time getting to know Sononochi’s way of working, and Anna and Giovanni of Teatringestazione led a dramaturgy workshop. Within the three-day walk that A.N.D. Theatre has proposed, each of us shaped our own beginning and end, and the actions that might happen in between. On the road, what will we meet, and how? What conversations will we have? Where will the disappearances each of us senses and thinks about meet and be shared? From me to us, from stillness to a party, or from a party into silence… Imagining the time we will spend with the people, trees, cats, dogs, stones and sea along the way, and with someone’s disappearance, we slowly began to inspire one another.

Team A · A late-night interview with the 7-Eleven owner

Late at night, we interviewed the owner of the local 7-Eleven. She has agreed to take part in a project that asks her to imagine her own death and, through an imagined funeral, to think about life and disappearance. As questions and answers went back and forth, the interview became a rich encounter with her life’s journey and her outlook on life. When her best friend happened to call, she switched it to a video call so we could all say hello, and the friend, cheering us on, treated us to a box of canned coffee and a box of ramyeon. Her mother who died long ago, her father who died many years later, the granddaughter born just two days before, her niece’s granddaughter and her friend’s child: before we knew it, we were absorbed in her life. At the end Anna said she felt she had become part of her life now, and the two owners, overjoyed, hugged us tight. What will her party on the 8th look like?

Team B · At farmer Hyekyung’s home

At farmer Hyekyung’s home we met two farmers, Makong and Hyekyung, and tasted the cabbage and turnips Hyekyung grows herself. They told us how they came to farming, and about the experience and the life they have built over long years of working the land. We talked about the marks farm work leaves on the body, the hardness of the labour, their pride as farmers and the way society looks at farming. Looking back on pumasi, the village custom of sharing labour, the warmth of community that is slowly fading, and seasons changed by the climate crisis, we shared memories and thoughts about what is disappearing amid the change. We ended the visit by sharing food that Heng and Narae had prepared.

Team A · Walking the whole route together

We walked on foot the Ganghwa roads we had always driven through, taking in the landscape, nature, people, and the traces of disappearance with our bodies. Along the way we met dogs barking at us and cats appearing out of nowhere, and when we had to walk along the road we gave ourselves over to the flying dust. In the deepening autumn we sensed the time of plants slowly drying after they had flowered. We walked from east to west, following the sun. As the sun went down, we felt our bodies grow tired and heavy, and thought about disappearance as part of nature. From 6 to 8 November we will walk this road again, together with everyone.

Team B · At the Heungwang 2-ri village hall

At the Heungwang 2-ri village hall, Team B met older residents of the village. They warmed up and did rhythm activities together, listened to Damien play the drums, and spent time together in many ways. The residents then shared how the village has changed over their lifetimes and the ways of life that are slowly disappearing. Listening to stories of pumasi (shared labour) and the warmth of community from the days when farming was at the centre of life, we thought together about what preservation and change mean.

Team B · Donggeomdo and Donggeom Dondae

On the way to Donggeom Dondae, we looked at the bridge that has greatly changed the ecosystem of Donggeomdo, and talked about how a bridge built for convenience has transformed both the lives of the islanders and the life of the sea. We then climbed up to Donggeom Dondae, which has had no care at all and has neither an entrance nor a path. Looking at the fort, now almost disappeared, we talked about it from the point of view of nature, of the fort itself, and of ourselves.

Team A · Meeting the village head, and talking about a shared funeral

Team A is working on making funerals for individual citizens together, under the concept ‘Good Mourning & Good Morning’ proposed by Anna and Giovanni (Italy). Today, after talking with the village head, A.N.D. Theatre, Sononochi, Anna and Giovanni looked at a shared funeral from the point of view of dramaturgy and discussed different methods. What legacy do we want to leave for the future?

Team A · At Hwanggu’s house

We visited Hwanggu, whom we met yesterday, at his house and talked further about disappearance and funerals as we think of them. We do not want to make funerals the subject; we want to borrow the form of a funeral so that we can all ask about disappearance and look back on our own lives. Many questions and answers went back and forth today. How would I die happily? What do I want to look at in my last moment? What would I want to say to someone who does not understand me?

Team B · Visiting Odu Dondae and Deokjinjin

Team B visited Odu Dondae and Deokjinjin to sense the history these places hold and the vitality of their nature, and shared the inspiration and ideas this gave them for the project. At Odu Dondae in particular, they asked whether the trees that have taken root in the fort wall should be removed to preserve it, and talked about the tension between nature and historical heritage, and about what to keep and preserve. Afterwards, at Heewarae’s café, they talked about what they had felt on the visit and tried out the play activities they will do with children from the local community centre.

Team A · Sononochi in conversation with the owner of Gukja & Jugeok

Sononochi spent time talking with the owner of the bookshop Gukja & Jugeok. She shared why she moved to Ganghwa some twenty years ago and opened the bookshop, and how she approaches life, and Sononochi introduced their own work. They also began planning a lunch, with Japanese food cooked by Sononochi, to share with the people of Keunnamu Camphill, a community where people with and without developmental disabilities live together.

Team B · Movement workshop at the local children’s centre

At the local children’s centre, Team B led a range of movement workshops with fourteen children who had come straight from school. At the end we asked them about disappearance, and one child’s answer stayed with us: “The thought that Santa Claus was real has disappeared now!” We promised to meet again next week and said goodbye with high fives.

Full meeting

Building on a year of online conversations, the two teams shared their ideas. Team A began from the question of what it would mean to plan your own funeral while alive, and imagined a three-day journey, like the Korean three-day funeral, walking from village to village as both witnesses to disappearance and pilgrims. Yonrimog proposed a sound walk in which the landscape you see now overlaps with sounds that are no longer there. Team B spoke of weeds and flow as keywords: what counts as useful or useless, and what grows back where something has been cut away. The two teams then discussed where their work might meet.

Team A meeting

Team B meeting

Team B · Harim book talk concert at Gukja & Jugeok

After the meeting at the Void Theatre, Team B helped prepare a book talk concert by the musician Harim at the bookshop Gukja & Jugeok. Kazuyo and Miho of Sononochi joined the front of house, checking reservations and guiding book sales in Korean, and experienced how a local bookshop runs and the work it takes. The team then watched the concert together, and afterwards shared thoughts on collaborating within Team B and discussed the next day's schedule and direction.

Team A 〈Good Mourning and Good Morning〉 · first meeting and conversation with the community (Hwanggu)

We talked with Hwanggu about disappearance, and about a person’s life and death. We spoke of the legacy of his life and of an imagined funeral, and he decided to take part in the project.

Choi Youngdoo

On the way back today, Choi stopped at an empty house and at the mudflat as the tide began to come in, and recorded the first sounds.