# Nobody's Return Canonical: https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/forest-misremembered-someone Nobody's Return, 2026 · current edition. Two-channel moving image, spatial sound and performance text. He Fa’s role: He Fa: moving image, text and spatial concept. HE FA / 何发 LIN QINGXUAN RESIDENCY PROJECT · 2026 EDITION Does returning to a place mean belonging to it again? Two-channel moving image / Spatial sound / A thirteen-part performance text A white window frame and the forest beyond. A still from the work, not exhibition documentation. 01 / A WAY IN ## I have returned. This place does not recognize me. 2 minutes 48 seconds. Actual residency footage, two-channel excerpts and a sound schematic introduce the work, with Chinese and English text embedded in the picture. This is an entrance into the project, not documentation of an installed exhibition. 02 / IMAGE AND DURATION ## The body leaves. Time remains. Sizeng, Zengcheng and Yucen enter the same forest. Doors, paper, glass and water retain their passages without assembling them into one shared memory. After someone leaves, the space continues; a body in another image may still be waiting. The work assigns no fixed past, present or future to its three figures, and day and night do not divide reality from dreaming. Long takes retain the duration of staying and leaving. Layers cross cuts: the next passage has begun before the previous one has left. Body, paper and wall: contact leaves a trace, but the trace does not yield a complete story. Two images occupy one plane: a layer continues across the cut. Here, the Odyssey first means recognition after return, rather than a retold adventure. Does arrival let someone recognize home? If the place remains, does it recognize the returning person? The title keeps this unverifiable experience open, without making one ending answer for every body. 03 / A POSITION FOR THE VIEWER ## Look toward one side and temporarily lose the other. Each image plane loops for approximately one hour. The two sides form neither a panorama nor a complete answer. While the viewer faces one side, the other continues. Turning, approaching and missing become conditions of seeing. Six spatial sound channels share a playhead and clock, looping independently over 37 minutes 17 seconds. Each wall also has its own sound. The unequal sound and image cycles change their encounters. A and B have equal image durations and do not drift once their start is fixed. These six custom sound positions are not cinema 5.1. The single-screen web editions contain that wall’s picture and wall sound only, without the six-point spatial layer. Sound captions describe documented paper, cloth, water, rain and ambience. “Wall-sound pause” does not mean the whole installation is silent. ### Wall A · excerpt from the one-hour loop Continuous excerpt 02:00; source interval 04:20–06:20. ### Wall B · excerpt from the one-hour loop Continuous excerpt 02:00; source interval 03:20–05:20. The excerpts come from different windows in the two walls and do not simulate synchronized A/B playback. The artist retains the full one-hour bilingual viewing copies and exhibition masters; contact for screenings and exhibitions. 04 / TEXT AND LIVE BODY ## Can a memory leave the body it came from? The thirteen-part monologue begins with coming back, yet cannot settle who has returned. Money, interest, calculation, consent, screens and bodies mingle; a pronoun changes position before its sentence ends. Chinese homophones and the changing meanings of 还 turn language itself into a site of recognition. He Fa appears through a prerecorded voice, with He Yu as the independent performer in the proposed live realization. The recording is not a sequence of movement commands, and the body is not there to explain the images. What is published here is the final text; a finished recording and documentation of the live work have not yet been supplied. The Chinese preserves the original wording, line breaks and spacing. The English is an editorial translation for this edition; reading both keeps visible the sound relations that cannot fully translate. 05 / CONTINUITIES ## Carry the question forward, not the forest. Translation, accent and transcription prevent language from returning unchanged. This monologue places that displacement inside a single speaker. Connected seats and screens give viewing a bodily position. The two-screen corridor asks what one gives up seeing in order to see. The person filming is also inside the relationship; the camera offers no final neutral position. Here, sound, image and body retain accounts that do not fully agree. These are editorial connections proposed in this presentation, not claims that the works belong to one event. 06 / EDITION AND CREDITS ## Keep the work, and what remains unrealised. Moving image and text He Fa Proposed performance collaboration He Yu; live realization pending Figures in the footage Sizeng, Zengcheng, Yucen Installation image edition Corridor V4 · one-hour polyphony Wall masters 4000×2000 each; 23.976 fps; approximately 60:00.013 Spatial sound Six mono channels; 48 kHz / 24-bit; 37:17 The two image planes and spatial sound files have been produced; the performance text was confirmed final on October 7, 2026. This page does not claim a completed live performance or installed exhibition. The year 2026 identifies this edition, not inferred residency dates. The stills come from existing footage, retaining its tonal and colour relationships rather than replacing it with generated images. Bilingual web editions are viewing copies, not exhibition masters. Sound captions follow the V4 event table and inherited source-window audits; they are not presented as a new, fully human-audited transcription. TAKE A PATH ACROSS ## Other paths from this work. Spaces transformed Seeing one side, losing another [Nobody's Return](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/forest-misremembered-someone) ↔ [YourTube](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/yourtube) YourTube positions bodies through connected seats and dispersed screens; the corridor proposal for Nobody's Return asks viewers to turn between two image planes. Both make seeing depend on position, but connected seating differs from what is missed when turning. 2026 · current edition / Two-channel moving image, spatial sound and performance text 2018 / Multi-screen video installation Read the source materials Later account [Two image planes and six sound positions ↗](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/forest-misremembered-someone#space) Current V4 production records and a two-screen schematic: approximately one hour per wall, with an independent sound loop. The page distinguishes produced files from the unrealised physical installation and does not treat the diagram as exhibition documentation. Period document [Installation instructions and playback ↗](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/yourtube#chapter-10) The saved installation instructions document per-screen playback, multiple screens and six connected low seats, providing a concrete basis for comparing viewing positions. [Continue from this work ↗](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/crossings#work=yourtube) Spaces transformed ### Seeing one side, losing another [Nobody's Return](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/forest-misremembered-someone) ↔ [YourTube](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/yourtube) YourTube positions bodies through connected seats and dispersed screens; the corridor proposal for Nobody's Return asks viewers to turn between two image planes. Both make seeing depend on position, but connected seating differs from what is missed when turning. 2026 · current edition / Two-channel moving image, spatial sound and performance text 2018 / Multi-screen video installation Later account [Two image planes and six sound positions ↗](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/forest-misremembered-someone#space) Current V4 production records and a two-screen schematic: approximately one hour per wall, with an independent sound loop. The page distinguishes produced files from the unrealised physical installation and does not treat the diagram as exhibition documentation. Current V4 production records and a two-screen schematic: approximately one hour per wall, with an independent sound loop. The page distinguishes produced files from the unrealised physical installation and does not treat the diagram as exhibition documentation. Period document [Installation instructions and playback ↗](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/yourtube#chapter-10) The saved installation instructions document per-screen playback, multiple screens and six connected low seats, providing a concrete basis for comparing viewing positions. The saved installation instructions document per-screen playback, multiple screens and six connected low seats, providing a concrete basis for comparing viewing positions. FROM HERE, ELSEWHERE ## Passages between works ### Related records in the archive [Fafalish ↗](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/fafalish) 2017 [YourTube ↗](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/yourtube) 2018 [Human Surrender / Shoot Self with You ↗](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/human-surrender) 2023–2024 ## Work record Nobody's Return, 2026 · current edition. Two-channel moving image, spatial sound and performance text. He Fa’s role: He Fa: moving image, text and spatial concept. Work / series Nobody's Return Date 2026 · current edition Medium Two-channel moving image, spatial sound and performance text He Fa’s role He Fa: moving image, text and spatial concept Catalogue section Selected works Cite this record: Nobody's Return · 2026 · current edition · He Fa: moving image, text and spatial concept · [https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/forest-misremembered-someone](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/forest-misremembered-someone)