'n-1 Performance life' documents Li-E Chen's two-year (2015-2017) experimental site-specific art project, 'n-1'. The project involved Chen's visits to 168 locations set out as squares on a Google map of Greater London, and used the city as a stage and open space for the execution of Chen’s experiments.

'n-1' investigated the condition of 'nothingness' drawn from the notion of silence, non-representational forms of expression, and both Eastern and Western philosophers and artists who use silence in their works, including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tehching Hsieh, Robert Wilson, John Cage, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett and the work of Improbable Theatre Company. ‘n-1 Performance life’ develops further Chen’s ideas about 'thinking posture', a term she uses for the disposition of mind and body that affects one's ways of living, thinking, and artistic making.