Cornea and Breath: She Calls Me Mao

                                            Re-weaving Fragments of Metaphor in the Bodily Field


The creation of this film began with a phenomenological engagement with matter and perception, but the driving force came from a core motivation based on lived experience.

The First Layer: The Bodily Field as Foundation

The film originates from a live performance situated within a circular arrangement of trees, where bodily presence establishes an initial site of bodily narrative. Within this context, posture and breath function as direct traces of a lived state, while elements such as light, air, and rain operate as equivalent and active agents shaping perception. This foundational layer seeks to construct a primary form of sensory credibility, thereby providing a pure material basis for the subsequent projection of emotion.

The Second Layer: The Manifestation of Metaphor—Breath, Order, and the Intergenerational Chasm

Once the bodily field is established, metaphors linked to personal narrative emerge with evident continuity. Central elements of the film, including the motif of breath and the reference to the cornea in the title, are traced to intimate experiential memory associated with respiratory illness in a familial context. Within the hospital setting, a bed sheet printed with a repetitive pattern composed of solid squares connected to squares marked by a single central point becomes a recurring visual form. This pattern functions as an archetypal sign, representing a rigid and impersonal order that is maintained in response to bodily vulnerability and uncertainty in lived reality.

This imagery, which relates both to the sustenance of life and to a fragile sense of order, extends naturally to an intergenerational relationship between a child and a mother. Within this relationship exists a largely nonverbal bond, comparable to the interaction between a human figure and the animal presence depicted in the film, yet it is also marked by a deep linguistic gap. This gap appears to carry forward the strained and labored rhythm of breathing associated with the clinical environment. It is filled with fragments of language that fail to be fully received or clearly positioned. Emotional tension often arises from the sharpness of these unanchored expressions and from the weight of silence that circulates between generations.

The Third Layer: From Personal Experience to Universal Poetics

Accordingly, the film moves beyond a personal narrative and frames a broader question. Under impermanence, how can order support communication? This order may be institutional, linguistic, or pre-linguistic. When these forms of order are fragile or shaped by division, communication becomes difficult to maintain. The film proposes a response based on bodily immediacy. A more basic form of conversation may be required. When logical language and established order appear to fail or become emotionally cold, shared sensory experience can still create connection. This includes shivering in wind, feeling rain on skin, and the strain and longing of breath. Such shared experience can form a temporary and fragile, yet real, bridge of understanding. In the film, bodily movement functions as an echo of a grandmother breathing with difficulty. It also serves as a present effort to cross a linguistic gap with a mother. In this way, the film seeks to reconnect life and emotion through bodily order under impermanence.
However, the film does not aim at reconciliation. The divisions of language and generation remain. Instead, artistic creation is presented as a different kind of practice. It functions as a necessary way to maintain a relationship with the world. It also serves as a point of leverage for continuous renewal of perception.



Year：2025

Duration：43'23''