Exhaustion in pandemic-time New York City spurred Yo-E Ryou’s decision to move to Jeju Island in South Korea. She found refuge among haenyeo, women who continue a tradition of diving ten metres deep or more without oxygen assistance to collect food from the sea. Her immersion among the haenyeo resurfaces as iterative art practice.
Breath Orchestra includes drawing, two video works, a multi-channel sound installation and performance, with seating that references bulteok, open-air enclosures where haenyeo gather. The project explores finding community through listening to breath and silence, and the felt knowledge of bodies. Part of Breath Orchestra materialises as a score, composed of four breaths of varying lengths in a cycle that can last three or four hours. The first breath is regulating: it prepares the body to dive. The second is powerful: energy for the dive. The third is the long submerged and silent breath of labour. On surfacing, the recovery breath – the fourth breath – is sometimes repeated twenty or more times. In other words: as long as it takes.
Ryou stresses that she entered this sea-world out of desire, whereas haenyeo enter it as labour. Reasons to go to the sea can be many. The recovery breath transitions into repair. Sometimes, survival is learning to breathe, and to listen, again.
—Astrida Neimanis
