In a staged replica of a funeral home in Korea, I wore a black hanbok my widowed aunt once wore for her husband’s funeral. For five hours each night, I wailed for each relative of mine who passed away in Korea. I sang their favorite hymnals and exhausted myself that I occasionally fell asleep. My colleague Katie Waugh stopped by each night for an hour to play requiems on her cello. Our performative and conceptual relationship to each other became more refined as each day passed. Her companionship was comforting, her melodies clashing with culturally saturated elements in the performance.

The essence of mourning was almost tangible with the sound of my wailing, scent of incense, and melodies of the cello. What I found fascinating was this hybrid ritual by mixing different cultural traditions in mourning. The performance was about mourning beyond cultural correctness or politics. With a mixture of different customs of mourning, I created an unfamiliar, therefore mysterious and sensual, setting which the audience could not engage in any other way than through their distant empathy of my physical wailing.