PERFORMANCES

I am your daughter

This performance unfolded through a simple instruction that invited participation but left space for ambiguity.
That openness turned the act of pulling fabric into a study of care, hesitation, and shared intention.
Moments of unscripted intimacy revealed how instruction itself can become a medium of relation.
What remained was not the action, but the quiet tension between doing, waiting, and witnessing.

What began as a simple gesture evolved into an exploration of agency, interpretation, and the relational dynamics that unfold within collective space.

The premise of the work is deceptively straightforward: participants are invited to pull a piece of fabric—like a slow, deliberate tug-of-war—toward a designated line. The only directions, written on a board, read:

Pull the middle marker on the fabric to a designated line.
There must be at least one person pulling, but more are welcome.

Nothing more was said about how the pulling should occur. This omission, initially unintentional, became central to the work’s unfolding. The ambiguity of the instruction created a field of negotiation—an opening through which care, hesitation, and relational ethics entered the space. The rule was not simply a logistical framework; it became a score for human interaction, shaping not just movement but intention.

At most, three people participated in pulling at once, while others lingered in the periphery—watching, waiting, choosing whether or not to intervene. This quiet choreography of participation and restraint became as significant as the act itself. I found myself asking: Is watching also a form of care? Could stepping back be an act of respect, or perhaps a manifestation of uncertainty, discomfort, or fear of disrupting the fragile balance of the moment?

A moment of unplanned intimacy shifted the energy of the piece. A friend from undergrad, @jello.bodega, stepped forward to help me pull. The gesture was spontaneous but profoundly tender. It disrupted the formal structure, revealing that care can emerge through small, unscripted acts of solidarity. In that moment, the work ceased to be a fixed performance and became a shared negotiation of presence.

Through this encounter, I began to recognize instruction itself as a conceptual medium—a tool that carries both authority and vulnerability. A rule, when placed within a collective setting, becomes a site of interpretation. It tests empathy, risk, and the participants’ willingness to read one another’s gestures as cues. The piece thus functioned less as a directive and more as a living ecosystem of attention: every pause, glance, and pull held weight.

Ultimately, the work is not about the physical act of pulling fabric, but about the invisible choreography that surrounds it—the hesitations, the quiet decisions, the negotiations of proximity and distance. The tension between clarity and ambiguity, action and pause, became the true material of the piece.

In reflecting on this iteration, I am reminded that performance is always porous. It is made not only by those who act, but also by those who witness, hesitate, or choose not to intervene. The performance exists in the space between instruction and interpretation—in that fragile, fertile in-between where care, uncertainty, and collaboration coexist.