Dappertutto Studio, the Big Bang, the First Density, and the Thrown Cosmos
Mansu Jo
The first time I encountered director Juckgeuck’s work was not in a theater but in an art gallery. Although my memory has faded, one image from the Dappertutto Studio Juckgeuck Solo Exhibition at Project Space SARUBIA in 2015 lingers: a crown of Ariadne, woven from light bulbs and wires. When Ariadne fell into despair after being abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos, Dionysos took her as his wife, gifted her a crown, and cast it into the sky to form a constellation. In the exhibition, Ariadne's crown shone like stars, though it had yet to be thrown by Dionysos. For Juckgeuck, the crown and constellation correspond to the white cube and the black box. While the gallery is where the crown is displayed, the theater is where it is thrown by Dionysos, the god of theater. This is not to suggest that Dappertutto Studio functions fully in both visual art and theater. Dappertutto Studio explicitly declares that its primary focus is theater. Yet, we often encounter them in gallery spaces because the exhibition space or the atelier where exhibitions are prepared is a place of intense density before their work is thrown into the theater. In fact, it is the density itself that must burst out as theater. In other words, they are searching for the original point of condensed intensity that forms the universe waiting to explode—the beginning point of the Big Bang. This pre-theatrical state is the “outside” of theater, and from this outside, Juckgeuck seeks the essence that makes theater what it is. It is the density of silence before the story is spoken in “words, words, words.”
In defining himself as a creative unit for theatrical work, Juckgeuck chose the term dappertutto. The Italian word dappertutto combines tutto, meaning "everything," with da, meaning "from," and per, meaning "through." This combination suggests an existence from and through everything, something that is everywhere yet diffuses and applies universally. Dappertutto, then, is a universe expanding from an original density. Although there once was the command "Let there be light," there was silence before the Big Bang’s light burst forth. As in Hamlet, “the rest is silence”—the silence that remains before and after it fragments and individualizes into “words, words, words.” Silence becomes words, and words, in turn, return to silence. Just as Dappertutto Studio quoted Zhuangzi’s words, “When meaning is obtained, words are discarded,” in the book that they are inscribing on the wall of their studio at Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, one must set theater aside to grasp the true essence of theater. Abandoning theater means heading towards something that enables their spontaneous theatrical works. An individual piece is only a point of its expansion or convergence, not an independent and complete work. However, this intense original density is “everywhere, yet simultaneously nowhere.”
Thus, the theater that Dappertutto Studio seeks is a kind of archi-theater. Referencing Sasaki Ataru, they describe the concept of archi-theater in their atelier exhibit as akin to an “unfolded book.” An unfolded book cannot reveal itself in its entirety. It can only appear as a folded book, folded multiple times, cut, and divided into pages, never allowing the whole to be seen at once.
When the name Dappertutto Studio is understood as Dappertutto + Studio—a term that combines a universal quality flowing everywhere with a sense of place—placeness is not only a physical location; it also means the individualization and undifferentiation of spacetime. As Dappertutto Studio works in various cities and locations, they seek to infuse each distinct place with an original density. The moment when the universal mind is individualized is when spacetime is born in the light, which is the moment of theater. Dappertutto Quad is their project to embody the universality of archi-theater within the undifferentiated space of the Quad. In celebration of the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture's new theater, Quad, the performance Dappertutto Quad structures its narrative around the four elements—water, fire, air, and earth. These elements represent universal substances before they become differentiated. On the Quad stage, Dappertutto Studio presents these universal materials in an undifferentiated form. If reducing individualized pieces into water, fire, air, and earth through the basic material-based imagination was a critical methodology inspired by Gaston Bachelard, Dappertutto Studio’s approach to theatrical creation can be seen as closer to an act of critique. In the space where theater unfolds, Dappertutto Studio seeks to perform critical actions that define the essence of theater itself. Their plays explore how each of the four elements relates to death. For Dappertutto Studio, the theater is a journey from life to death. The place of the archi-theater, like an unfolded book, is called the universal density, a place of life without a body. Yet, the act of acquiring life through individuation inevitably presupposes death. When water, fire, air, and earth merge to form a universal density, taking on a body as the universe, Dappertutto Studio calls this state “death-life.” For a complex multicellular being to sustain life, it must die to allow another entity to attain life. While drama traditionally hinges on conflict and opposition, Dappertutto Studio seeks to reveal that death and life are not in opposition but are essential to one another. It is this drive to reconcile opposites that draws Juckgeuck to the I Ching (Book of Changes).
With the command “Let there be light,” a finite body begins to move, marking the start of the play. Then, when a brief moment of death arrives with the blackout, the play ends, waiting for the lights to come on once again. To celebrate the birth of the four-sided black box theater, Quad, Dappertutto Studio has defined this space as one of “death-life.”
Dappertutto Studio calls their work at the Seoul Art Space Geumcheon “Dappertutto Geumcheon,” where they presented The Exhibition of Theater, The Theater of Exhibition. In its Western etymology, the word exposition means “to draw out and display,” while in the Sino-Korean term jeonsi (展示), it means “to spread out and show.” Although ”‘spread out” may imply laying out items in an individuated manner, Sasaki Itaru’s concept of “spreading out” refers to the “body before individuation.” Thus, what is spread out here is not diffused in space but rather a concentrated density at a single point, which does not fragment into visible individuated forms. It represents the force that enables individuation, the primal substance inherent within all dispersed entities. The exhibition of theater reveals the original force that enables the individualization and visualization of theatrical narratives. This force originates in death. By presenting the Pietà—Mary with the plastic bottle Jesus on her lap—alongside wire strands shaped like circular and helical DNA, Juckgeuck visualizes the death of an entity destined to resurrect and ascend to another dimension. With the light and the command “Let there be light,” the death-life briefly reveals the individuated body and disappears again with the return of darkness. In five individuated works alternating between light and darkness, mirroring a five-act play, Dappertutto Studio “exhibits theater” and “theatricalizes exhibition.” In Variegation X, the opening work for the 2024 Jeonju International Sori Festival, “variegation” refers to “various individuated forms,” while the added X represents the unindividuated. The stage, populated by a masked Nongak (a traditional Korean farmers' music performance) band and citizens from all walks of life, re-enacts Dappertutto Studio’s method of merging two opposing forces—the face and the faceless. Each recurring name—Dappertutto Quad, Dappertutto Geumcheon, and so on—demonstrates how X can unite with any form. Through the continual merging of these contradictions, Juckgeuck reveals the contours of an expanded X. As the lights turn on, off, and on again, in a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, Dappertutto Studio seeks the sustaining force of theater within this endless repetition.
Mansu Jo (Theater Critic)
Mansu Jo is a writer and dramaturg specializing in theater. He has served as the dramaturg at the Namsan Arts Center and currently works with the National Theater Company of Korea. His dramaturgical credits include more than fifty plays, such as Incendies, Oslo, Widows, and Sunlight Shower, as well as changgeuk (Korean traditional opera) works like The Forest Fire and The Merchants of Venice, and operas such as La traviata. He is the author of Books on Stage and the translator of Scène, a collection of philosophical letters between Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Believing that criticism should nurture performance rather than merely evaluate it, he aims to write criticism that precedes and informs the stage.
