8 Hours and 21 Minutes
Performance, Video 5:14
9/2022
I was walking through the village in a red sweater that was unthreaded. I used my body to re-measure the scale of time and space.
8 hours and 21 minutes is a durational performance that explores memory, time, and the physical connection between self and place.I returned to my childhood village, a place filled with memories of growth and family, wearing a red sweater hand-knitted by my grandmother. In front of my old house, I began unraveling the sweater and walked through the village as the threads came undone, using a poetic gesture to measure my journey.
Over the course of 8 hours and 21 minutes, I traversed familiar sites—the riverbank where I once played, the road at the village entrance—until the entire sweater was completely unraveled. The red thread wrapped the village like an umbilical cord, symbolizing the intimate connection between myself and the place of my childhood.
Through this act, I used my body to measure both time and space. As the red thread disappeared, my childhood vanished completely, evoking the fragile, ephemeral nature of memory. The work reflects on the passage of time, the materiality of personal history, and the ways in which our physical and emotional landscapes are intertwined.
