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0. Prologue

Components:
    Wise Lump (sculpture)
    Portal of Answers (installation)
    The Chrysanthemum's Folly (interactive performance, run time approx. 45 min)


yFFy (Connie Fu and Jungmok Yi) exhibited installation 'The Wise Lump & the Portal of Answers' and performance work 'The Chrysanthemum's Folly' at Cherry Street Pier in Philadelphia, PA as a part of Testing Grounds, a group show organized by Alexandria Nazar and Austen Camille Weymueller.

The Wise Lump and the Portal of Answers are inseparable, as if two sides of one coin, or a yin-yang. They are aspects of each other. The Wise Lump has wisdom from another place, the messages from which need to be translated in order to be received by the mainly English-speaking audience.

The Portal of Answers is a total being! They cannot be contained! They're a mischievous freak. Their specialty is throwing onions. Whether they actually have any answers at all remains to be answered. They are at once a place, a space, and an entity.



On October 25, 2020, an audience gathered at Cherry Street Pier to witness the Wise Lump and the Portal of Answers in action. To a soundtrack composed just days earlier in a whirlwind of production, the pseudo-deities emerged from their hiding places to greet the public.

Phase 1
The Portal of Answers pokes their head out of the installation room and drags a wagon, loudly, behind them as they make their way toward the Lump, who is stationed about 300 feet away. Their journey is punctuated by moments where they pause, squat, draw a face with a particular expression using oil stick on newsprint, and stick that face onto themselves via conveniently placed wire spears along the curved edge of their headdress. Meanwhile, the Wise Lump is shuffling out of their lumpy room, surveying the outside, speaking in Korean, realizing that they are unintelligible to the crowd, fetching a PA system from back inside the room, and calibrating their speech until finally they are speaking an accented English.

Phase 2
The Wise Lump begins a monologue, asks the crowd rhetorical questions such as "Are you looking for career advice? I'd suggest contacting your local career adviser." They are not making much sense, and plus they are speaking through a mask and fabric so their speech is muffled. The Portal of Answers scurries around throwing vegetable matter at the Lump and audience members with glee. The audience stands around half in curiosity, half in confusion. Such is the state of things!

Phase 3
Enough of the nonsense, the Wise Lump thinks. They initiate a game, whose rules are only half-explained. Basically, 10 members of the audience are invited to participate. Each receives a sheet of riddles indicating the locations of chrysanthemum flowers hidden throughout the performance space. They are to fetch a flower and bring it to the Lump, but can only move whilst the Lump is saying the phrase "Mugunghwa kkochi pieotseumnida" (무궁화꽃이 피었습니다, lit. "The Rose of Sharon Is Blooming").

Phase 3
Enough of the nonsense, the Wise Lump thinks. They initiate a game, whose rules are only half-explained. Basically, 10 members of the audience are invited to participate. Each receives a sheet of riddles indicating the locations of chrysanthemum flowers hidden throughout the performance space. They are to fetch a flower and bring it to the Lump, but can only move whilst the Lump is saying the phrase "Mugunghwa kkochi pieotseumnida" (무궁화꽃이 피었습니다, lit. "The Rose of Sharon Is Blooming").

Phase 4
If a game participant is caught moving whilst the Wise Lump is not saying "Mugunghwa kkochi pieotseumnida", then they are taken prisoner and tied via satin ribbon to a long fabric tendril extending out of the Lump's room (aka extension of their self). The Portal of Answers notices this, and - though still mischievously tossing things at people - begins to feel uneasy. You see, prisoners...are not free. And who made these rules up anyway? Who am I to not have to abide by them, while these people do? And so, following this train of thought, the Portal sneaks up to the prisoners one by one and cuts them free with a pair of purple kid scissors.

Phase 5
As the last prisoner is being cut free, the Lump catches wind of the Portal's indiscretion. They begin a wild goose chase around the performance space, shrieking at the Portal "WHY JUST LET ME HAVE THEM I WANT TO KEEP THEM!". However, the Portal is faster, and runs more or less free.

Phase 6
Without warning, the two entities in a coordinated fashion break from the scene and set up a merch table, where a large ceramic bowl of fresh chrysanthemums is put on display for a limited-time deal: one flower and fortune in exchange for $, a hope or dream, or any other object. Audience members one by one approach the table and exchange a good or hope for a fresh flower and a look to the future, crafted by the forever-knowing / always-forgetting Lump and Portal.