re:incarnate

During the performance, Jo Lee gradually stitched sheets of handmade recycled paper into a book. Jez Fang composed sound in real time, responding to the paper as it was turned, rubbed, pierced and bound, while Kayo Lu’s poetry moved through the evolving work, introducing another narrative layer of material transformation, memory and renewal.

Field recordings of water, forests and papermaking were interwoven with the subtle sounds of paper, improvised composition and spoken poetry. Bookmaking became not only a material process, but an experience generated collectively through sound, language and matter.

Scoring a Book as It Takes Form

Sound was not added to the completed book as background or accompaniment. It emerged simultaneously as the book came into being.

Thread passed through paper, fibres rubbed against one another, and pages were turned, layered and bound. Jez Fang responded to these subtle sounds through live composition, creating another temporal and spatial dimension around the material.

The movement of the paper influenced the direction of the sound, while sound altered how the audience perceived the paper. Rather than composing music for a passive object, the work formed an ongoing dialogue between sound and material.

Materials Making Sound Together

Handmade recycled paper retains traces of plant fibres, previous use and material reconstruction. When touched, folded, turned and stitched, it becomes more than a surface for visual observation; it becomes an active source of sound.

Field recordings introduced water, forest environments and the processes of papermaking into the performance. The paper’s friction, movement and rhythm responded to its ongoing transformation, blurring the boundaries between environmental sound, bodily action and material resonance.

Collective Formation

The form of re:incarnate was not entirely determined in advance. It emerged through the interactions between paper, sound and spoken poetry.

The book functioned both as the outcome of the process and as a score for the live experience. Each stitch, page turn and pause could alter the structure of the sound, while poetry opened a space of memory and imagination between material and composition. The audience encountered not only the making of a book, but the ways in which material could be dismantled, reconstructed and given another voice.

Through the convergence of three creative languages, regeneration became more than the physical transformation of paper. It became a process through which matter, sound and language continually re-formed their relationships.