2015–present↗
P4 Theater
Spaces, participants, events and documentation change one another through sustained work.
Collaborative practice2023 / Interview archives, collective creation and public documentation
Personal Chronicle / PHA
Begin with a personal account, propose a project publicly, and continue the archive through action.
- He Fa’s role
- Author of the framework and declaration; P4 project organisation
- Framework publication
- 22 March 2023
- Six starting points
- Programma, Program, Hero, History, Ambition, Ambiance
Complete chapter contents
How the project is structured
In Theatre and Fear, He Fa presents Personal Chronicle / PHA as a way to reorganise P4’s earlier photography, theatre, workshops and actions into a framework for continuing creation. It begins with a two-to-five-hour individual interview in which a narrator recounts their history and ambitions. The recording is retained, with a shorter edit proposed for circulation. After the archive is established, the protagonist can announce a project publicly and invite others to join.
The six starting points impose no fixed medium and may lead to rehearsal, screenings, writing, exhibitions or other actions. The rules propose one project at a time for each protagonist, a public presentation to mark its end, and filming and publication throughout. The transcripts of Zhang Lei and Yun Jianhui published in March 2023 place specific personal accounts beside the framework. This page preserves access to those records while retaining the narrators’ own authorship of their experiences.
He Fa’s source text · 2023
“The act of filming must be embedded in the event’s coming into being.” In Personal Chronicle, interviews, calls for participation, practice and review are connected. The start and end of recording are also used to distinguish collective creation from daily life.
Recording before the project: Yun Jianhui’s self-account
A jointly signed article of February 25, 2023 describes a specific recording session: in early February, He Fa set up a camera and recorded Yun Jianhui speaking for nearly four hours, then made an approximately half-hour edit for circulation. The article also introduces Yun’s documentary Refinding the Compass and announces a March 4 private screening with its director. The documentary belongs to Yun’s practice; He Fa’s recorded and edited material is Yun’s personal-history account.
Yu Yu Yumu: from a personal chronicle to collective writing
The April 6 article calls Yu Yu Yumu the first person to initiate a project after the PHA call. He Fa’s introduction describes two recording sessions and links to a two-hour Personal Chronicle: Full Record. It then changes voice to Yumu’s own proposal for The Thirty-Three: eight collaborators would write fictional lives spanning more than two millennia. The recordings are documented past events; the proposed people and scale of collective writing remained the terms of an open call.
Moving image & related documents
- 2023-03-22 · Theatre and Fear: Personal Chronicle (Chinese) ↗
- 2023-03-09 · Personal Chronicle: Zhang Lei — transcript as published (Chinese) ↗
- 2023-03-09 · Personal Chronicle: Yun Jianhui — transcript as published (Chinese) ↗
- Original WeChat article (Chinese) ↗
- 2023-02-25 | Original Chinese source: 全球私映 | 偷窥者与纪录片 —— 恽剑辉与《重寻指南针》 ↗
- 2023-04-06 | Original Chinese source: 招募 | 太想出走？干脆一起《走出日常》！ ↗
Archive note
Compiled from the listed P4 documents, with later recollections dated separately. Editorial description and source excerpts are distinguished. English translations were prepared for this archive.
Continue exploring
DOCUMENT
2023↗
Becoming Wind, Breaking Waves
A personal account by Lifeng calls others into a shared creative process.
Collaborative practice
2021↗
Kill the Rose: 3P—Watching, Performing, Recording
Cameras and writers enter rehearsal, making documentation a form of participation that can affect the event.
Collaborative practiceCLOSE READING / 2026 CURATORIAL INTERPRETATION
Personal Chronicle / PHA
How can recording a person enable them to initiate something?
Personal Chronicle removes life-writing from the résumé’s retrospective format. A narrated past and a desired future share an interview. The record need not merely certify a finished history; it can supply material for a new invitation. Someone listened to by a camera can then become someone inviting others to act. The important shift is this exchange of positions, not an assumption that a long interview is inherently truer than a short video.
The long account, its short edit and a later project should retain their differences. A version edited for circulation shifts emphasis; a public report temporarily concludes an action without concluding the person. If this portfolio borrows the method to present He Fa, it must give history, ambition, completed work and unrealized proposals distinct temporal positions. It can help readers enter someone’s world without allowing the latest arrangement to replace the whole of that person’s life.
The limits of this reading
Narrators’ own films, writing and practices are not reassigned to He Fa. Unproofread transcripts should retain their status labels.
Sources for this reading
Based on Theatre and Fear, published 22 March 2023, the public personal accounts and subsequent open calls.
Continue in writing
Follow works back to signed texts, with writing at the time, later reflection and participant accounts identified separately.
Open Call: Step Outside the Everyday
Reading connectionCo-signed by Yuyu Yumu and He Fa, the article moves from a Personal Chronicle interview to Yumu’s own Thirty-Three Lives proposal. She seeks eight collaborators to write fictional lives spanning more than two thousand years. The person being recorded issues a new invitation, preparing to initiate a shared writing project.
Theatre and Fear: Personal Chronicle — Offering Our Future
Reading connectionThe 2023 Personal Chronicle manifesto connects a long interview, a circulation edit, project initiation and a public presentation through explicit agreements. Recounting a past becomes a starting point for inviting others into future action. The rules also address when recording begins and ends, and how relationships within creation remain distinct from daily life.
Work record
Personal Chronicle / PHA, 2023. Interview archives, collective creation and public documentation. He Fa’s role: Author of the framework and declaration; P4 project organisation.
- Work / series
- Personal Chronicle / PHA
- Date
- 2023
- Medium
- Interview archives, collective creation and public documentation
- He Fa’s role
- Author of the framework and declaration; P4 project organisation
- Catalogue section
- Collaborative practice
Cite this record: Personal Chronicle / PHA · 2023 · Author of the framework and declaration; P4 project organisation · https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/personal-chronicle
- 2023-03-22 · Theatre and Fear: Personal Chronicle (Chinese)
- 2023-03-09 · Personal Chronicle: Zhang Lei — transcript as published (Chinese)
- 2023-03-09 · Personal Chronicle: Yun Jianhui — transcript as published (Chinese)
- Original WeChat article (Chinese)
- 2023-02-25 | Original Chinese source: 全球私映 | 偷窥者与纪录片 —— 恽剑辉与《重寻指南针》
- 2023-04-06 | Original Chinese source: 招募 | 太想出走？干脆一起《走出日常》！
TAKE A PATH ACROSS
Other paths from this work.
Keeping and losing
How many fragments make a person
Personal Chronicle / PHAFour-Dimensional People
Four-Dimensional People divides gestures and surroundings into photographic fragments; Personal Chronicle connects a narrated past with ambitions. Both organize fragments of a person without thereby standing in for an entire life.
Continue from this work ↗Read the source materials
- Work imageImages and presentation ↗
Pages 36–37 of the early portfolio contain this series; in the first image, the body, chair and objects are assembled from misaligned rectangular photographs.
- Period documentHow the project is structured ↗
The 2023 text Theatre and Fear proposes a two-to-five-hour personal interview, retained records and subsequent project initiation.
- Work imageImages and presentation ↗
- DOCUMENT RECORD
Keeping and losing
Facing assessment and initiating a future
Personal Chronicle / PHAFa’s review
Fa’s review preserves an account within assessment recordings; Personal Chronicle connects long interviews to later initiatives. Both turn speech into material, but responding to an assessment and proposing one’s own project are different positions.
Continue from this work ↗Read the source materials
- Artist’s statementThe artist’s statement before the review ↗
The saved English artist statement before advancement review raises artist identity and expression; it is a contemporaneous self-account.
- Period documentHow the project is structured ↗
The 2023 text Theatre and Fear proposes a two-to-five-hour personal interview, retained records and subsequent project initiation.
- Artist’s statementThe artist’s statement before the review ↗
FROM HERE, ELSEWHERE
Passages between works
- When can it end
An interview, a project and a public report have different endpoints; a life does not conclude when a project does.
- When another person enters
The interviewee can go on to initiate a project, moving from the subject of an account to the initiator of an action.