Coastal Entanglement：《Unplace a Boot》

photo credit: Yolanda vom Hagen

performance uplace a boot, 2026

After surviving the struggle of getting trapped in the mud on our field exploration day during the residency, one of the rainboots I wore to the coast was left entombed. It haunted me and fellow textile artist Wang Huan, who had accompanied us and came to my rescue.

We decided to collaborate on a performance on the final day of the residency. For the piece, she created the garment I wore and designed an installation directly on the silt—laying down fabric for me to walk on and positioning reeds to ensure my safety—while I performed the walk and tried intensely to dig into the mud. After full exhaustion against the silt, I lay down to rest on the mud.

This is an accidental performance that sprung entirely from an accident. It emerged from the visceral attunement of being entangled in the mud, where it ceased to be a place, but transformed into a living state of matter that responded to my presence. There, I understood my body was not ecologically built for the clay ooze of the coast. From liquid to solid, from yielding to sealing, what I felt from being stuck wasn't a rejection nor 'an unwelcoming note from nature', but a humbling shock and a moment of unlearning my human posture.

We went back not to rescue an object of belonging, but to make amends of what doesn’t belong there. I named the performance 'unplace a boot' because it was never about retrieval, but about restoring its non-presence.

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We finished the residency on Tuesday but there's been so much to follow up and process that I literally did nothing today, simply letting it all sink in. As a writer, I relied mostly on my sensory apparatus to construct memories: the fragrance of orchids that greeted me on the first day, the mesmerising labyrinth crab burrows across the coast, the marvellous polyphony of herons and unfamiliar birds, the unrelenting heat of sun on my skin, the sweetness of edible 槐花, and so much more...

There are a lot of stories to be told but one experience continues to reverberate is when I got trapped in the quicksand-like mudflat. It happened in a flash—the mud gave way with such sudden velocity that my brain wasn't allowed time to register the danger. It was only later, the more I thought about it, that I fully grasped how treacherous it had been.

/ crab burrows and footprints on the mud /  photo credit: Yolanda vom Hagen

I had been unwittingly bold, gambling on my wishful trust in my peers—which, ultimately, held true. Yet the moment my feet broke through the surface, and became entangled in the mud, it ceased to be a mere place, but transformed into a living state of matter that responded to my presence. In that visceral second, I understood my body was not ecologically built for the clay ooze of the coast. From liquid to solid, from yielding to sealing, what I felt about being stuck wasn't a rejection nor 'an unwelcoming note from nature', but a humbling shock and a moment of unlearning my human posture.

With tremendous help of fellow artist Jango, I was pulled free. As my feet touched the ground again, I felt an instant flood of guilt—how much I had inconvenienced people. The weight I carried was in every sense doubled: the physical mass of my body and the burden of its consequence rippling outward.

I had a cerebral understanding of entanglement, yet it was this shock that drove that knowledge into my bones. Despite the peril, I started to unfurl the significance of this coastal dissonance. Its resistance, though harsh and unforgiving, dwarfed me into but one small node in the immense web of life. Here, there was no such thing as nature but a more-than-human world. My encounter with the shapeshifting mud was strange and uncanny—the precise antidote to a romanticised version of 'beautiful nature'.

Long after leaving the shore, the image of my mud-entombed boot haunted me (I had managed to bring one boot back as I crawled to the shore, but the other was deeply lodged). I dreamed of returning to the coast to rescue it, not because it was my belonging, but quite the opposite: its plastic makeup didn't belong there. I was lucky to find fellow textile artist Wang Huan to resonate at the same frequency. We decided to collaborate on a performance on the final day of the residency. For the piece, she created the garment I wore and designed an installation directly on the silt—laying down fabric for me to walk on and positioning reeds to ensure my safety—while I performed the unplacement of the boot.

It was a very sunny morning when we returned to the coast. In the car, she asked if I suffered PTSD from the earlier life-threatening struggle. Strangely, I did not. We had meticulously considered safety, but far more important was this: I didn't see the mudflat as a devouring monster or a sullen adversary. It was an interactive field that would teach me to adapt my humanness. I was ready to enter and learn.

The performance went well, yet the part we cared the most didn't happen—we weren't able to retrieve the boot. After four days of tidal erasure, it was hard to even locate. The stick Huan had prepared snapped almost immediately. I turned to my bare hands. Each time I pressed downward, the mud answered with equal and opposite force. It took labour to simply sink my hand deep enough to search; carving even a small peephole demanded far more.

My muscles ached. Eventually I had to lie down and rest upon the mud. I never found the boot, yet in that moment of spreading my weight, I found a sense of acceptance.