One time, I was attempting an installation outdoors using natural materials. In this case, installation to me meant establishing a space for my performance. I intended to create a stage that did not have the appearance of a stage, an apparatus that would only suggest a relationship between the assembled structure and myself.

The set-up was soon completed, and I was standing back, checking to see if the entire stage had the right proportional balance for my performance. I was checking my handiwork just as painter stands back from his canvas from time to time to examine the entire work through narrowed, critical eyes.

At the same time, this was my opportunity to check the distance between the audience and the apparatus, a factor that is always important to me. The gaze of another is always necessary to the apparatus, but especially when it is wide or tall, a sense of distance is one of the most important methods I have of translating to the audience my consciousness of space.

It happened when I was looking at the installation from a certain distance. A car passed by on a road beyond my artificially established space. When I looked harder, I could see that there were also three men working in a field beyond the road. Because my eyes in that instant acted as a framework, the scene looked just like a still cut from a motion picture.

At that moment, I felt conscious of a scene beyond the artificially constructed space, beyond consciousness of the created performance and installation. Of course, the movement and sound of the car that went by as well as the sight of the three farmers came into my view entirely by chance. Yet, the accidental tableau looked quite as if it belonged there beyond my apparatus and even felt as if I had intended it to be there. Now that I think of it, it was something like what John Cage referred to as a "chance operation" in something I have read.

I had the impression that it was not I who had chanced upon a scene, but that it was the scene that had captured me. At that moment, it suddenly occurred to me that the act of looking by someone in the audience was a matter of considerable freedom.

This observation soon came to exert great influence on the way I set up the space for my performances. I devised a system for adding a certain element of chance within the consciously established space of the performance and in the purposeful construction of my actions. My idea was to include chance as a matter of necessity, for my perception of space had changed so that even in a space governed by necessity, I wanted at least some part of it to be determined by chance.

However, in the distance from the viewers' seats or from the audience itself which is based on the given conditions of a performance, it is difficult to discover this element of chance. This is because the same conditions that prevent me from escaping from my established framework exists for the audience and their position.

So I came to plan intentionally for the existence of an element of chance, very subtly but in a way that the chance element was easy to identify. Through this, I felt that I could suggest the idea that performance could be "an activity that uses happenstance intentionally."

Then I realized that it was none other than the audience that uses happenstance for a purpose. In other words, they are the ones who stage an artificially constructed scene. From this, I sensed a possibility for performance, which had been unable to escape the limitations of a visual/spatial art form, to evolve into something more conceptual or into a form that concerns itself with the structure of vision. This experience provided the opportunity to reexamine a method of presentation which seemed to me a very deductive one.

In 1988, the Olympic Games were held in Seoul, Korea. In connection with an art festival that was held concurrently, I travelled to Pusan to give a performance.

The performance was to take place on a beach and I had decided to place a fishing boat out at sea behind the space where I was giving my performance. I gave directions to the fishing boat to go back and forth in the distance all the while I was giving my performance.

It is natural that there should be a fishing boat on the sea. However, I intended that as it repeated the same action, the audience should notice this and realize that the boat was also deeply related to the gestures, space and consciousness of the performance. It was also an experiment in space, a part of which was an exploration of the extent to which I could bring space into the service of performance.

However, something unexpected happened that day. Although the fishing boat was to pass by back and forth in the distance, it suddenly headed straight for the place where I was giving my performance. And right in the middle of my performance, at that.

I soon found out what the problem was, when the fisherman bombarded me with questions such as how many times he should be passing by out on the open water.

It was already clear to him that he was a performer, but he had wanted to confirm what he should do to fulfill the role of an actual performer. It was not possible for an old man who was a real fisherman in Korea to understand why he had to exist in the landscape or how someone present only in the landscape could be a performer.

The roles and attitudes of a performer in his understanding were those of performers in the popular sense, such as those he saw in village festivals or itinerant troupes of entertainers.

Thus, he had become uneasy about his role as he maneuvered his boat. He had wondered if it was really all right for a fisherman to be acting like a fisherman. He had come to me, forgetting his undisclosed role in the background, to confirm this point.

Thanks him, I was forced not only to abandon the theme I had been considering of "freedom of sight from the point of view of the audience and their position," but the sudden interference of his actions caused more than a little confusion for the audience.

However, ironically, as the boat approached and the audience could make out that the person in the boat was bellowing to catch my attention, a great number of them understood it to be one of the staged effects. Although I realized this only afterward, all phenomenon pointed to the freedom of sight. Also, I realized that there was no difference between my personal, one-sided intentions concerning the scene and real happenstance.

Another lesson learned from this experience was that so long as an installation and space were established and a certain visual distance maintained from the viewers, there was a performance no matter what happened. If I may suggest a more radical definition, the existence of performance depends on establishing a space and a position for the viewer, not on any intentional actions.

This more than anything signified to me a "freedom of sight." In this sense, establishing a space and the distance of the viewers' gaze are the first elements, the point of entry of performance. Personally, the reason I sometimes go outdoors to conduct field work and construct my own impromptu installations is to make my own text on visual distance. For field work involves the pleasure of acting alone and sitting alone in the position of the viewer. . . .