Delicate sensory communication and connection with strangers amid shifting, vanishing sand.

Challa is a participatory performance in which audience members engage in silent conversations with strangers through sand. How much slips past us in the fleeting moments of everyday life? The work creates a space in which participants can be fully present with a stranger and experience the delicate communication that emerges between them.

Inspired by the work of Danish artist Helle Hove, the performance begins with sand—a material in constant flux, free of prescribed form or judgment. The traces left by one audience member meet and mingle with those of another, transforming into unexpected forms before gradually disappearing. Through this process, participants experience a form of nonverbal communication that reaches beyond words and come to realize how different beings are intimately connected within a shared time and space.

An experience that can never be repeated—the shifting sand continually erases what has just been made, drawing participants wholly into an acute awareness of ‘here and now’. This singular journey, at once playful and meditative, offers an aesthetic experience of the fleeting moment, made all the more radiant, paradoxically, by the knowledge that it will soon vanish. Passing together through the moments when forms emerge and dissolve, audiences will come to rediscover the joy of creative play they had forgotten.

<Credits>

Director | Jinyeob Lee 

Co-Director | Helle Hove

Performance Designer | Sam Trubridge

Performer | Hyunsung Seo, Batol Abdolla

Sound Designer | Minkyung Oro 

Lighting Designer | Hayoung Jeong

Sand Drop Mechanism Design and Fabrication | Sam Johnstone, YooCrew Ltd

Sand Drop Mechanism Development |

Marineboy(Sunghyung Lee)

Stage Director | Sungdeok Kim
Development Producer | Hoyeon Lee

Producer | Bongmin Choi

* This project is supported by Arts Council Korea.

2022–24 SPAF Associate Artist

Jinyeob Lee 

Director Jinyeob Lee
2022–24 SPAF Associate Artist

Jinyeob Lee is a director who uses performance as a platform to arrange dramatic encounters between strangers and imagine new possibilities for connection and community. As head of Elephants Laugh, she creates works that dismantle the boundaries of the stage, with community, site specificity, and audience participation at the heart of her practice. Moving beyond the written text, she explores the full range of human perception, continuing to create works that are shaped collaboratively with audiences themselves.

Her major works include Bodies in the Dark (2015), MULJIL (2018), Unseen Turmoil (2022), Beyond Diverse Dimensions (2023), and Between the Glances: A Symphony of the Unsaid (2024).

Elephants Laugh  

Elephants Laugh creates work that connects everyday life and art, centered on audience participation, site specificity, and human relationships. Beginning with the unique stories of places and communities, it creates performances in which strangers encounter one another and connect, inviting audiences to discover new relationships and worlds. It also works with diverse communities, such as people with visual impairments, refugees, and older adults, sustaining an artistic practice that expands the senses and explores what community means today.