The term "Sanchakou" (The Crossroads）first appeared in the "Book of Han · Treatise on Geography," where it originally referred to an intersection where three roads of different directions and irregular shapes meet. In ancient times, Sanchakou held rich cultural symbolic meaning: for instance, symbolizing choices in life's path, representing turning points in fate, or signifying life-and-death decisions. The Peking Opera "Sanchakou" is a traditional opera in which actors confirm each other's identities through a fight in the dark. The dark fight scene provides an important performative arena based on theatrical convention, using virtual actions to make the audience believe in the darkness.
First, several concepts from the phenomenology of the body are referenced to understand the body. Assuming knowledge originates from experience, the body is the most crucial "thing" in receiving experience, the gateway that triggers the world, and the a priori condition for spatial orientation, self-experience, and perception of the world. The body is an object in the world, an observable entity that reveals the world's essence. Observing the body through subjective and objective means provides two different perspectives on the same body. The concept of embodiment in phenomenology proposes an experimental account of a state that is essentially ambiguous. It explores the possibilities of bodily cognition at the intersection of "belonging to me" and "alien to me," activity and passivity, interiority and exteriority. In darkness, touch occupies a special position in bodily self-awareness. Touch and skin together reveal the ambiguity between selfhood and otherness, interiority and exteriority. The body's boundary both outlines the contour of interiority and exposes it to the external world. In darkness, one perceives their own boundaries through touch. Hypothetical spatial exploration measures space and others' bodies through the body's scale, heightens the sensitivity of skin touch to capture surrounding objects, and uses performance to present an ambiguous state of the body. How to assume the blurring of bodily boundaries in darkness and reconfirm the interior and exterior. Pain merges into one based on self-experience and interaction with others. Actors create pain for others in darkness, applying it to the other as if perceiving themselves, and the feedback of force from both sides resembles experiencing a blurred whole together. The actor's bodily boundary is extended and confirmed through the other. Actors deepen cognitive conflict by making the audience believe in stage darkness through virtual actions. From flesh to embodiment, flesh presents itself through the experience of the embodied subject.
Embodied Performance: As an artistic practice and philosophical concept emphasizing the body's central role in cognition, emotion, and experience. Ontologically, it advocates that "the body is no longer a tool but the subject of cognition." The actor's "phenomenal body" (embodied existence) uses technique to present a "semiotic body" (non-embodied character concept). This process relies on the externalized gaze of the audience to maintain the critical transformation between "embodied" and "non-embodied." It dissolves the "mask" barrier necessary for "acting." In the digital age, this concept not only provides a path for traditional performing arts to return to essence but also brings inspiration to cutting-edge fields like artificial intelligence and robotics.
Embodiment theory completely overturned the traditional cognitive model treating the mind as an isolated "intracranial computer." It emphasizes that human consciousness, emotions, attitudes, and values are formed on the basis of the biological body. Thought and experience are not based on representational "stimulus-response" but are dynamic, systemic results of mind-body interaction. Individual experience is seen as the product of the joint action of the biological body and the socially/culturally constructed body.
"Bodily Subjectivity" as a Field of Meaning Generation: The unconscious transmission of "body techniques" and "habitus" emphasizes that much cultural heritage and performative essence is learned and transmitted unconsciously through bodily practice. The photographic medium provides a possibility of "freezing time" for actions and bodily experiences in motion, an exploration into contemplating the complexity within a "frozen temporal slice."
Thermal imaging technology, as a key enabling technology in modern warfare, is called the "Eye of Darkness" and the "Eye of War." Using the "Eye of War" to watch a "fight" performance. The act of viewing becomes a reflection on behavior, reflecting on the "performative" behavior of conflicts in the contemporary world. Reflecting on human embodied experience from the visual perspective of "temperature."