Light and movement interrupt the stillness, and reality begins to unfasten. What is felt replaces what is known. In that exchange between body and perception, a different truth comes into view fragile, temporary and shared.

How does truth exist in contemporary life, shaped by social norms, daily rhythms, and visual expectations? When people move through systems of observation and discipline, the truth they trust may already feel like a shared illusion. UNTOLD begins from this question. The project places directing practice at its heart and explores how truth might be generated on stage through the bodies of performers. This truth is not about psychological sincerity. It is a psychological experience perceived by the audience through movement, breath, and the flow of time. It exists in the space between body and consciousness, in the gap between what is seen and what can be felt.

Truth in this work does not come from storylines. It emerges through subtle interactions between bodies and their environment. Movement, light, and breath combine to form a continuous sensory flow. Performers are not simply telling a story; they become containers of shared psychological experience. Movements are deconstructed, extended, and sometimes displaced, creating a rhythm that is felt rather than narrated. Space becomes an extension of bodily awareness rather than just a stage setting. Time is flexible, folding in pauses, repetition, and acceleration, revealing layers of experience. All of this is developed collectively with a team of creators from diverse directing backgrounds, experimenting with bodies, images, sound, and light to see what triggers resonance between performers and audience.

Light becomes a central image seed in this process. It functions not only as illumination but as a catalyst for psychological space. Changes in brightness, speed, or edge boundaries transform the perception of the body and visual experience into psychological experience. Light reveals performers’ actions while showing the space and the audience’s attention. The stage shifts from a field of visibility to a field of perception, drawing the audience into the generation of truth. In this approach, performance moves beyond composed visual pictures to generate perceptual psychological images. It exists at the intersection of image-driven performance and the affective turn in contemporary performance, guided by imagery and structured through emotional flow.

Archival materials spanning almost eighty years, including images, social events, labor practices, and cultural prototypes, form the material foundation of the project. The project uses a performing archival approach to explore how archives can be reactivated through bodily practice rather than reproduced. During rehearsal, these materials are tested and selected. Only movements, images, or sounds that resonate in the body and trigger a psychological response are retained. The rest are discarded. The archive thus shifts from static reference to lived experience, becoming a continuously generated perceptual history between performers and space.

The core of UNTOLD is not storytelling but creating a shared threshold of experience. Performers and audience perceive bodily time within the same light environment, with the rhythms of space and psychological echoes overlapping. Through ongoing exploration of image seeds, bodily action, and perceptual structure, the project proposes a directing logic driven by imagery. Performance becomes a practice rooted in generation, perception, and resistance.