Boryun Choi

The Counting

There is a language, objective and universal, that sets one extreme against another while placing another domain in the middle, often referred to as the "golden mean." When an individual encounters this language in the process of socialization, they may apply it to their own life. They compare their life with the lives of others to gauge where their life stands or where the life of someone they care about is situated. For instance, whether their life is on a stable path or plagued by misfortune and danger, and if it's the latter, how severe it is.

When an individual wishes to recognize and express the violence they are subjected to, does the language commonly used in society to describe the "moderate" or the "appropriate" actually help? Moreover, can someone who possesses this language, whether learned or inherited, freely diagnose those who don't possess it as unhappy individuals?

<The Counting> is a script that emerged as I questioned whether there are commonalities between the allegorical usage of the so-called "moderate state" in various academic fields and the language employed by individuals to describe the violence they face. If such commonalities exist, I wondered how effective they are.

The script consists of two scenes, and they have no connection in terms of content, space, or the characters involved. This wasn't the original plan. The initial setting was supposed to be, "The protagonist encounters a theater troupe rehearsing for a performance in an outdoor space the next day while returning home late at night." However, I decided to leave them as two separate and independent stories, as I wanted to break free from the compulsion or habit of making the story coherent and linear. I also considered the budget constraints, making it difficult to shoot multiple episodes. In essence, <The Counting> was produced not as a representation of actual on-site protocols but in the format of mimicking the appearance of a film production.