Breathe to the Silence
An evolving work in flow
London · Macao · Shanghai · Hangzhou · Beijing · Shenzhen (2016–ongoing)
Breathe to the Silence is a contemporary performance / performance-installation (with moving image + sound), presented in festivals and institutions across theatre venues, gallery contexts, and public sites. Since 2016, it has unfolded through six context-responsive iterations, with selected elements of sound, staging, and live action shifting in response to audience and context.
30 min
2 performers
First Presented in 2016
Installation elements:
Ladder; oversized knitting wool (yarn), 2–4 small monitors; projector + projection surface (wall/screen); ground light (optional)
Breathe to the Silence is a contemporary performance/performance-installation developed through site-responsive iterations (2016–ongoing). It treats breath, voice, and language as material, and uses the city as an acoustic condition that reshapes what can be heard, understood, and endured. The work moves through a structured live score: cutting and unmaking, non-verbal exchange, and a language duel that escalates into force.
It opens with the artist cutting hair on a ladder while a second performer unravels an oversized woven mass of yarn, releasing it across the floor. The sound track begins with sleep-breath as a dream threshold, followed by “Long Hair Ballad (长发谣)”, and then a “city layer” that shifts by version: in the UK iteration it was everyday conversation recorded by the artist with two Chinese women; later iterations replaced this layer with multilingual readings of the Bible’s “Tower of Babel.”
After the cutting/unravelling, the performers enter a non-verbal dialogue (sneezes, coughs, breath) while winding the loose yarn around their hands in continuous rolling motion until both hands are bound; the pace accelerates, breathing quickens, and they collapse face to face. A ground light then casts their shadows onto the back wall and repeatedly cues a stop–start structure: when the light comes on, they freeze into balanced still poses under constraint; when it drops to darkness, they speak in mutually unintelligible languages, repeating meaningless dialogue. Across these cycles, volume rises as understanding fails. The ending breaks into dragging and collapse—one performer pulling the other by bound hands as yarn trails along the floor—before both stand, face each other, and finish on a shared inhale that holds the room in suspension.
Sound (by version)
Fixed order: sleep-breath → Long Hair Ballad (长发谣) → city layer
UK version: city layer = everyday conversation (artist + two Chinese women)
Later versions: city layer = Tower of Babel recordings (multiple languages/dialects)
Live speech (varies): mutually unintelligible languages; repeated dialogue; volume escalation
Video surfaces
4 monitors: a filmed documentation of the artist cutting her own hair from long to short + archival montage (historical hair-cut footage)
Back wall projection: falling garbled characters (cutting phase) → live-projection “mirror” → shadow plane (later)
Live score
Cut / unweave: hair cutting on ladder + yarn unravelling; yarn scattered as floor field
Non-verbal chapter: sneeze/cough/breath exchange + hand-binding winding score; acceleration → collapse
Light/pose + speech duel: spotlight-triggered still poses under constraint; dialogue repeats, grows louder, fails
Ending: dragging with bound hands/yarn trailing → collapse → stand → face-to-face shared inhale
