The I of the Beholder (2020)

This piece was created in collaboration with Husk Husk. It premiered at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London on the 28th of February 2020.

We see ourselves through the gaze of others. It seems that we can only learn about ourselves, feel ourselves and even value ourselves, by observing how others perceive us.

But is this really so? Is it not possible to see and know ourselves via another kind of perception, not mediated by the perspective of others. And if so, would this feel like becoming more ‘you’ or more like becoming someone else, someone ‘you’ have never seen before? What remains of the ‘I’ without any perceiving others? Is there an ‘I’ without the eye of the beholder?

In this piece, Sung Im Her will seek to dance without the awareness of a perceiving audience, thereby trying to ‘show’ without the necessity to ‘be seen’. Her intention is to transcend everyday mediated self-perception and to discover whether a more truthful sense of ‘I’ reveals itself or that the ‘I’ becomes meaningless and empty.