行為展演 Performance

展演分為兩個階段，象徵著創傷的轉化與共存。

The performance consists of two phases, symbolizing the transformation of and coexistence with trauma.

階段一：沈重的量體

Phase I: The Weight of Silence

藝術家邀請觀眾將內在無法言說的掙扎、衝突與失落，書寫於一塊巨大的黑色箱板上。這塊黑板化身為歷史沈重的載體。接著，觀眾受邀以水來衡量這些情緒的「重量」，並將其注入大型水袋。

藝術家背負著這裝滿眾人情緒的水袋步入海中。在海水與水袋的雙重包覆下，她僅能艱難地呼吸，肉身在窒息邊緣試圖尋找生存的縫隙，同時與狀態浸入在一起。

階段二：

黑色箱板再次由藝術家獨自負重。她背負著眾人的心聲穿梭於當地的常民生活之間，迫使人們再次直視這些被隱藏的傷痕。最終，她走向河流與海洋交會的沙洲，以肉身抵抗湧流的河水與潮汐。

在長時間的對抗與支撐中，流動的水體不斷沖刷著象徵重負的黑板與藝術家的身體。這並非一場征服自然的表演，而是一場與未知同在的過程。

透過創作試圖在劇烈變動的時代中試著提出與實踐一種方式：透過與混亂（Chaos）的共存，感知那些被強加的歷史經驗所產生的卑微與恐懼，並讓它與自然待在一起，共同消化。

當海浪沖刷的那一刻，邊界消失。被壓抑的生命力在流動中被重新看見、被溫柔地消化。最終，在長時間的打磨與張力中，那份本該屬於這片土地上人們的尊嚴，以及存在本身即永恆的價值，化為一道光亮，透過藝術家的肉身湧現於當下。

如同山川與大海，即使歷經人工改造與歷史變遷，其本質依然永恆存在。

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Performance

The performance unfolds in two phases, symbolizing the transformation of and coexistence with trauma.

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Phase I: The Weight of Silence

The artist invites the audience to write their inexpressible inner struggles, conflicts, and losses onto a large black panel. This panel becomes a physical carrier of historical weight. The audience is then asked to measure the “weight” of these emotions using water and to inject it into large water bags.

Carrying the water bags filled with the collective emotions of the participants, the artist walks into the sea. Enclosed simultaneously by seawater and the water bags, her breathing becomes labored. At the edge of suffocation, her body struggles to find narrow spaces for survival, merging physically with the state it inhabits.

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Phase II

The black panel is once again carried solely by the artist. Bearing the voices and emotional weight of others, she moves through the everyday spaces of local life, forcing people to confront these concealed wounds once more. She then walks toward a sandbank where the river meets the sea, using her body to resist the rushing current and tidal forces.

Through prolonged endurance and resistance, the flowing water continuously washes over both the black panel—symbolizing burden—and the artist’s body. This is not a performance about conquering nature, but a process of coexisting with the unknown.

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Through this work, the artist attempts to propose and practice a way of being within an era of intense transformation: to coexist with chaos, to sense the inferiority and fear produced by imposed historical experiences, and to allow them to remain with nature—to be collectively digested.

At the moment when the waves wash over everything, boundaries dissolve. Suppressed vitality is rediscovered through movement and gently absorbed. Ultimately, through prolonged friction and tension, the dignity that rightfully belongs to the people of this land—and the inherent, eternal value of existence itself—emerges as a beam of light, flowing through the artist’s body into the present moment.

Like mountains and seas, even after human intervention and historical transformation, their essence continues to exist eternally.

Breath of Chaos: In the Presence of the Unknown

Year/Venue: 2025 / FKY (Festival Kebudayaan Yogyakarta), Indonesia

Format: Performance Art, Participatory Installation, Site-Specific Commission

"Breath of Chaos" is a site-specific work created by artist Milla Lee, commissioned for the 2025 FKY International Arts Festival in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

In this piece, Milla Lee responds to her phased field research on indigenous tribes and the memories of persecution and exile her family endured during the anti-Chinese movements of the Suharto regime (New Order era). She places this personal historical trauma in deep dialogue with the fracture of collective cultural identity in Indonesia—a nation scarred by Dutch and Japanese colonization, and the indigenous tribes' subsequent assimilation into Islamic culture.

Immersed in Yogyakarta, the artist perceived a deep-seated anxiety transcending ethnic lines—a sense of inferiority rooted in the subconscious, a collective inability to acknowledge one's own significance resulting from long-term colonization, ethnic cleansing, and capitalist extraction. Whether it is the Chinese families forced into migration or the indigenous peoples losing their spiritual anchors, all have suffered the disintegration of confidence and culture under the crushing wheels of history.

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