OPEN SCORES FOR BODY AND ICE
01 — Overview
Open Scores for Body and Ice
Research Publication · 2026
Where does movement come from?
Open Scores for Body and Ice explores this question through encounters between the body and ice. Temperature, weight, friction, melting, and bodily habits become conditions through which movement emerges.
Developed from the 2024 collaborative research project HWA, the research revisits an initial distinction between a body that acts and a material that receives its intervention. In practice, the body’s heat and pressure change the ice, while the ice’s coldness and instability shape bodily sensation, judgment, and movement. Neither acts independently of the other.
The publication brings together archival records, reflective writing, and five open scores. It considers how learned ways of sensing and moving become apparent—and may be reorganised—when familiar actions can no longer be sustained. Plasticity becomes a working concept for examining these changes in the body, the material, and their relationship.
Translating bodily experience into proposals that others can enact, the book allows questions from one encounter to be taken up by another body, in another place.
02 — Research Process
Revisiting the Archive
In HWA (2024), three practitioners worked with ice, candles, and incense to explore changes in materials and bodies. My research with ice followed two approaches: intervening through tools, heat, and force, and attuning my body to the ice while allowing unexpected changes to occur.
Returning to these records in 2026, I questioned the distinction I had made between changing the ice and responding to it. Even while I was attempting to control the material, its temperature, weight, and surface were already influencing my actions. The publication preserves the earlier records in their original language, allowing the differences between the two periods to remain visible.
Working with Changing Conditions
I explored lifting, pushing, pulling, leaning against, and moving ice. As its edges softened and water spread, grip, balance, and friction changed. Repeating an action meant working with conditions that could no longer support the same movement.
These encounters brought attention to accumulated habits of sensing, judging, and moving—what I call mom-teul (몸틀, “body frame”). I explored how these habits guided my choices, and what became possible when they were interrupted.
The encounter also extended beyond direct touch: anticipation shaped my approach, while coldness, tension, and remembered contact continued to influence movement after I had let go.
Translating Experience into Scores
Photographs, video, and research notes became materials for revisiting actions, sensations, and shifts in the relationship between body and ice. The challenge was to translate these experiences into words while leaving room for another person’s interpretation.
Five open scores developed around approaching, shifting weight, following resistance, moving and being moved, and letting go. Direction, texture, body parts, and dynamics offer choices for beginning each score. Those choices can change as the encounter unfolds.
Writing, drawing, symbols, and sound offer further ways to carry an experience into another form. The resulting records can become material for another reading, another question, or another attempt.
03 — Open Scores
↗ Direction
Linear / Circular / Spiral / Angular / Upward / Downward / Closer / Farther
≈ Texture
Smooth / Rough / Soft / Hard / Sticky / Sandy / Damp
⊙ Body Parts
Palm / Tongue / Elbow / Shoulder blade / Pelvis / Knee / Sole / Tip of the toe / Eyeball
∿ Dynamics
Quickly / Slowly / Steadily / Gradually accelerating / Heavily / Lightly / With a rebound / In isolated parts / In succession
Score 01 — Before Contact
⊙ ↗
Position your body in relation to the ice. Choose one body part and initiate a movement from it toward or away from the ice.
↗
Follow a straight, curved, or spiral path. Vary your distance from the ice, your height, and the direction of your gaze.
≈
Look at the surface and edges of the ice, the areas through which light passes, and the water gathering around it. Bring one quality you notice into the texture of your movement.
∿
Vary the speed of your approach and notice how your breathing and bodily tension change. Choose whether to make contact or linger a little longer.
Q. What is already changing in your body before you touch the ice?
Score 02 — Shifting Weight
⊙
Lift the ice or lean part of your body against it. Sense the direction in which weight is transferred between your body and the ice, and how that force travels through other parts of your body.
↗
Choose a direction in which to shift the weight. Explore moving upward and downward, sideways and diagonally, in circles or spirals.
≈ ⊙
Attend to the hardness and slipperiness of the contact surface. As the ice melts and its surface and edges change, reconsider which body part receives the weight and how you make contact.
∿
Repeat, varying the amount of force and the speed. After setting the ice down, notice any lingering tension and sense of weight in and around the parts that supported it.
Q. While you were shifting the weight of the ice, where did your own weight move?
Score 03 — Following Resistance
⊙ ↗
Make contact with the ice using one body part, and slowly apply force in one direction.
∿
Where movement stops or takes an unexpected direction, try increasing or decreasing the force.
≈
Attend to smoothness and roughness, catching and slipping at the contact surface. Repeat the same attempt as the ice melts, noticing how resistance changes.
↗ ⊙
Change direction or initiate the same action from another body part. If a new path emerges, follow it for a while. Let stopping or returning be part of the path.
Q. Did resistance stop the movement, or did it initiate another movement?
Score 04 — Moving / Being Moved
⊙ ↗
Choose one body part and a direction, and begin a brief action with the ice. You may choose to push or pull the ice, lean against it, or move it.
≈ ⊙
Attend to moments when the ice slips or tilts, or contact is lost. Follow whichever part of your body responds first.
↗ ∿
If the movement passes into another body part, begin the next action from there. Allow your initial direction, speed, and amount of force to change as well.
Q. Where does the body end, and where does the material begin?
Score 05 — After Contact: Letting Go
↗
Set the ice down and watch the direction in which the water gathers or spreads.
⊙ ≈
Bring your attention to the parts of your body that touched the ice. Notice whether coldness, wetness, pressure, or tension remains.
⊙ ∿
Begin a small movement from one lingering sensation. Allow it to pass into other body parts or change in size and speed.
↗ ≈ ∿
Try a movement you made while in contact with the ice once more. Notice how force, path, and texture differ before and after letting go of the ice.
04 — Publication
The book brings records from 2024 into conversation with writing and open scores developed in 2026. Earlier notes retain their original language, allowing the assumptions of the initial research to remain visible alongside the questions that later unsettled them.
Archival images, reflective texts, and scores offer different ways of entering the research. Readers can follow its development, return to a question, or take a score into practice. The publication becomes a place to revisit what happened and a resource for encounters yet to take place.
Concept, Research & Writing — Nohyoun Kim
Choreogeography — Walter Qian
Design — Seungyeop Kim
2024 HWA: Collaborative Research — Nohyoun Kim, Yeeun Kim, Jibin Park
Advisor — Jinyeob Cha
Review — Jean Lee
Supported by Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture
Produced in Seoul, South Korea
05 — Full Publication
Read the complete publication, including the 2024 archive, research reflections, and all five open scores.
Read the full publication ↗