This was the first time my performance artwork was part of a group collaboration and a ticketed event. It felt like returning to the theater with a brand-new body. It was also my second time engaging in a material-based collaboration—this time with a crochet artist. Her name is ljeljeng. She hand-made a custom one-piece yarn dress with a single continuous thread for me.

Onstage, a stack of traffic cones had been set up in advance, with an umbrella set inside. I pulled out the tail end of the yarn from the dress and tied it tightly to the umbrella handle inside the cones.

I began walking. The unraveling thread trailed behind me. I walked while flipping through a gossip magazine.

Since there was only one dress and all our discussions had happened online, there had been no rehearsal. I quickly realized the yarn unraveled much more slowly than I’d imagined, so I broke into a run.

I had to continually find new anchor points to hold the yarn taut, so it would unravel smoothly as I ran.

I pinned the yarn under a male audience member’s leather shoe, and also handed it off to a few women and children in the audience, gesturing with a clenched fist to signal them to hold tight.

As I ran, the yarn’s friction began to sting like blades against my legs. Still, I didn’t stop: I ran, spun, walked, and leapt.

At one point, the yarn snapped. Unable to find the new end, I bit into it and pulled out a fresh strand with my teeth.

When the dress had unraveled to just above my knees, I—someone who usually doesn’t even wear underwear—suddenly felt ashamed. I grabbed the gossip magazine again, tore out some of the most sensational pages, and stapled them to my hem in an attempt to cover my increasingly exposed legs.

I kept running, unraveling and patching myself up with tabloid headlines.

I exited and re-entered the stage several times. Finally, from outside the space, I looked back and saw the entire area covered in tangled yarn. I returned, tore off the stapled magazine pages, picked up the round mirror left at center stage by a collaborator, and stared into my own reflection while winding the yarn that had unraveled from my body around the mirror as I walked, until I exited the space.

In the program booklet, my section reads: “Civilization. I am both forged by civilization and fuel for its forge. I use it, as it also uses me.”

Thanks to Langasan Theatre for the invitation, to all the team members, to the photographers: Huang Yan-Qi, Wu Yao-Dong, Li You-Cheng, Yan Gui-Zhen, and to our dedicated production coordinator, marang aly.