Beum-Kyu Choi ^(KR)

Beum-Kyu Choi (b. 1997) continues to explore the relationship between action and subjectivity through the differences between bodies. The artist captures the flickering affects that arise when the voices, gestures, habits, and attitudes of different bodies intermingle, and focuses on transforming them into aesthetic capacities. Choi is particularly interested in how experiences often considered negative, such as failure and loss, are transformed into fragile beauty through such experiences of affect. His practice is based on the belief that through this transformation, new worlds open up that were previously unimaginable.

He has presented performances such as Had Time Yet (Ob/Scene Focus, Seoul, 2023) and I am Telling a Lie (Sunhwadongcheon, Seoul, 2023).

Performance for Gathering 2025: Had Time Yet Part 2

Beum-Kyu Choi (b. 1997) continues to explore the relationship between action and subjectivity through the differences between bodies. The artist captures the flickering affects that arise when the voices, gestures, habits, and attitudes of different bodies intermingle, and focuses on transforming them into aesthetic capacities. Choi is particularly interested in how experiences often considered negative, such as failure and loss, are transformed into fragile beauty through such experiences of affect. His practice is based on the belief that through this transformation, new worlds open up that were previously unimaginable.

He has presented performances such as Had Time Yet (Ob/Scene Focus, Seoul, 2023) and I am Telling a Lie (Sunhwadongcheon, Seoul, 2023).

Had Time Yet Part 2 is a continuation of Had Time Yet, once again opening a realm defined by waiting. Five performers stand before five texts on loss, hesitantly yet through practice throwing their bodies into the unfolding circumstances, continuously undergoing transformation. In this process, the overcoming of hesitation and the act of ‘Becoming’ come into focus. As their bodies and the sense of loss intertwine, spreading and sliding into one another, the embodied gestures wander across mutable spaces on stage. And yet, leaning on the serendipity of chance, something is transcended while something is relinquished. This interplay of gap and waiting not only obliterates every fixed identity and subjectivity but also draws future time into the present. The texts on loss are excerpts from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Marguerite Duras’s Emilie L, Alan Alexander Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Jeong Young-moon’s Vaseline Buddha, and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. In the space where these distinct literary articulations of loss—as an absence—unfold, the five performers hurl their embodied gestures into it, incinerating their former selves and transforming into something other. In doing so, absence—carried by waiting—briefly lingers before us.

Concept, Choreography: Beumkyu Choi
Project Producer: Yejin Lee
Sound Composer, Operator: Yejin Lee
Performance: Frida Grant, Lea Gregersen, Abraham Rademacher, Alberte Ahrenkiel Koch, Malte Rahm
Graphic Design: Wonho Lee
Fashion Supporter: Studio Stars

This profile was last updated on the 18 February 2025.