Become a Mountain: Reading "Twenty Actions for the Body to Accompany the Soul"

1.

The guide provided in Macanese artist Leong Chu-han’s "Twenty Actions for the Body to Accompany the Soul in Life" is not about religion, nor are these twenty actions a form of cultivation. Sometimes, they represent a summary of the participant's personal aesthetic experiences. They treat the body as a spaceship on this planet, emptying it to allow the soul to reside fully, to see and respond to the space we inhabit. In these personal actions, one seems to collide with silence, but with a book in hand, we can hear infinite echoes within:

"Twenty Actions for the Body to Accompany the Soul in Life" is presented in a very interesting format: three booklets and twenty action cards, offering different ways to accompany the reader. The book and the reader, the body and the soul, and these are all very private matters, making it hard not to associate them with solitude. Is solitude necessarily negative? Doesn't a solitary person also develop a strength unique to them?

Even picture books that teach about facing groups often have silent visual rhythms.
The body, waiting for the soul to catch up, will be treated kindly during these processes.

"Twenty Actions for the Body to Accompany the Soul in Life" is just such a book.

2.

After its publication, "Twenty Actions for the Body to Accompany the Soul in Life" has had various interactive exhibitions. That day, at one of these exhibitions, I recited pi to some unknown decimal place, listened to Neruda's love poems read aloud in an unfamiliar language, and doodled.

The only thing I was afraid to try at the exhibition was "recording your name and calling out to yourself while walking"—the voice involves self-awareness and identity, and I haven't overcome this hurdle yet. At the same time, I wonder if I could do it, would my body also take a step towards accompanying my soul? Six months later, this exercise greatly encouraged me. I, who suffer from phonophobia and am afraid to even say my own name, even found the courage to start my own YouTube channel!

During the editing process, I tried out these actions, sometimes transforming them. For example, "searching for blue in the city" became "searching for OO." We loved playing "Where's Wally" as children, so why do they all seem the same now? Whether blue or green, whether dogs or birds, they are clearly all different! It reminds me of what a friend said about stereotypes helping group identification but also causing模糊认知 (vague cognition). When identifying other individuals, "my" position becomes clearer, just like seeing the endless blue sea, and the path a dolphin takes underwater helps me know the approximate depth of the water and my own position.

3.

This book will constantly change, evolving into its own form within different individuals.
It was once an exhibition.
Before that, it was an artist residency.
Later, it became a book, allowing every reader to become an actor.

Art books might be a crucial medium for making artistic concepts accessible in people's lives.

Everyone can participate, from re-understanding the artist's/author's perspective on their work (because she is no longer the first-person voice; what were originally "performance," "photography," and "video" become something else entirely) to reflecting on how I/we individually respond in our own reading.

The artist initiated these creations: from adjusting her way of observing unfamiliar residency environments, allowing readers to understand and, through these 19+1 actions, adjust their own lives when they often feel out of sync with the world.
When the work becomes a book, and the "viewer" becomes a "reader," does everything in the book cease to be her personal artistic expression? (How can the artist's perspective be protected?) (Does the reader become the master of their own narrative during the reading process?)

The most enjoyable part is how, from concept to book, there are so many forms to present and deepen it. Can it be called polyphonic singing? What comes to mind are the various sounds in a valley, whose sum is the soul of the mountain. These twenty life actions turn every reader into a small mountain, one after another.

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