Threads of Time functions as a pilot performance for my PhD, allowing me to explore how embodied gestures, ritualised actions, and symbolic materials (thread, cloth, a golden egg, and four hand-crafted masks) can transmit cultural memory in public space. All garments and masks are made from burlap fabric—a coarse, humble material that carries its own history of labour, transit, and storage. Its texture echoes ancestral hands, the movement of goods across landscapes, and the quiet endurance of everyday rituals. The masks are inspired by pieces from the Asian Civilisations Museum, whose collection of ritual objects, guardian figures, and ancestral faces shapes the symbolic language of the performance.
Staged along the riverfront, the work uses slow, contemplative movement to transform an ordinary walkway into a site of reflection and shared memory. This pilot brings together four generations: two of my daughters, my nanny, and myself. Each of us carries different strands of lived experience, creating a layered, intergenerational presence within the work. Wearing the burlap masks, we form a small collective body that moves through subtle gestures and shared rhythms.
I am particularly interested in how their non-staged, intuitive movements will respond to the task of performing. Because my daughters and my nanny are not trained performers, their natural gestures, hesitations, and spontaneous decisions will enter the work organically. These honest, everyday movements expand the piece, revealing how embodied memory emerges not only through deliberate ritual actions but also through instinctive responses, familial dynamics, and the simple act of moving together.
Through this pilot, I refine my methodology, observe audience engagement, document embodied knowledge, and continue investigating how simple gestures become carriers of cultural and intergenerational memory. This pilot performance forms the foundation for the next section of my research, where I articulate the methods, theoretical frameworks, and collaborative processes that will guide the larger PhD project.