Slowly Moving With A Burden Bent

Prototyping A Participatory Performance

Slowly Moving with a Burden Bent, the artist walks, carries, and occasionally rests. A participatory performance, pausing urban time, welcomes dialogue and gestures that undo and reassemble repurposed fibers into a secondary, three dimensional poetic response. Look for the burden of an exaggerated canvas backpack being carried, slowly. Look for the moments when the burden requires rest. Stop to listen for the fiber being torn. Stop to listen to the dialogue between strangers twisting and knotting fiber and looking for the words chosen to anchor the ends of the chord before the artist packs up the tangle and moves on to another location.

I’m taking this work to NYC October 18-20th. A part of Art in Odd Places. Artnet has recently reviewed the event, A Quirky Art Festival will be Unfolding in New York.

The images below are documenting the prototyping work that is the necessary work for any performance based participatory action.

prototype self portrait of what carrying might look and feel like. year: 2021 location: In Cahoots Residency, Petaluma, CA

The oversized backpack being carried measures 32”x 28”x 12”. Its contents include a hand drill, lengths of colorful fabric sourced from deconstructed hospital scrubs and naturally dyed gauze. Twelve text ‘anchors’ are tucked into pockets, later allowing participants to arrange with their twisted fiber, a poetic response. 

The backpack shape is fabricated by artist and friend Hiroko Tsunetsugu, h-filaments.

TEAR

The sound and gesture of tearing any fabric is both a resourceful domestic labor, and at times a brokenness connected to an end to something that no longer functions.

TWIST

After fiber is torn, participants will be working together, joining two lengths, twisting and knotting them into cord. A simple act of collaboration.

ANCHOR

After twisting and before leaving, participants anchor each end, to be preserved or, left loose, to unfurl and fall into a state of ‘being undone’ or simply loosened. Text anchors include:

TEAR, ACHING, FEAR, FALTER, BELONG, CARE, NOTICE, NERVOUS, LONELY, FAMOUS, GATHER, INTENT, SCREAM, PEACE, GREIF

The final loose structure takes the intentional shape of many voices and hands, holding our casual and complex interactions.

open studio night at the end of my residency at Walkaway House. Tearing, Twisting and Anchoring.

---

My inquiry about care and carrying began in 2021 and continues to be nurtured over time.

With great appreciation for the opportunities to simply be an artist. In Cahoots Residency, Kala Art Institute Artist-in-Residence, Walkaway House Installation Space Residency