Arts Thread

How do you move when there’s nothing left to hold?* It is not that there are no things left, but what does holding mean at all. Referring to bodies, human bodies—during a highly contagious pandemic—holding was put into question even more. I laid overcooked rice over my body, compost, cream cheese, construction tape, paper bags, artist tape in the form of a grid, plaster bands, fabric, and sand; as if I wanted something to make me feel held, contained. I could not hold other human bodies for a while, and others could not hold me either. Holding my body in various materials was a first intent to determine my own (physical) boundaries in space. A delineation, a volumization, a grid, a 3D model. Holding became not only something someone animate could provide for me and my body, or vice versa, but something space together with certain matter could potentially help with. I wonder, when does gravity win us over? And instead of climbing, we just want to hang. To feel our weight, to be limited and comforted by gravity. Hang the sandbags on your body, hang your body on the sandbags, hang your body on the grid, hang your doby on the drig, it all gets so mixed up. The size of the module responds to the measurements of my body: forty-two centimeters is my width. At the end of the day, it is my inventory, and for a while, only in my body I could trust. * Allusion to The Concept of Dust, or How do you look when there’s nothing left to move?, by Yvonne Rainer, MoMA, NY, 2015.