Negotiating Balance

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Click any image for larger view.

STABILITY IS AN ARCHITECTURAL PERFORMANCE PIECE that was occupied by two artists, Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder, 24 hours a day during the first week of an exhibition. In counterpoint to its name, Stability is a piece in which balance was designed to be a matter of negotiation.

Like a see-saw, this 25 foot structure is a house balanced on a central pivot with the two artists living at either end. When occupied the two bodies will need to move in the space in relation to one another to keep the structure straight. Visually separated by a kitchen and bathroom in the center, the occupying bodies will sense each other through displacement of weight. Activities will naturally change (willingly or not) as the house shifts.

A HISTORY OF COLLABORATION

Shelley and Schweder met each other during a year-long residency at the American Academy in Rome, and connected over their shared interest in working at the intersection of art and architecture.

The following year they collaborated on a project at New York’s Sculpture Center called Flatland which combined radical architecture and 6 live bodies in an intensive 3 week occupation. While living in this work they came to understand buildings as actions as well as objects, and how architecture initiates a feedback loop of influences between subject and object. Winston Churchill once said, “First we shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.”

Read more here.

Collaboration by Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder
Lawrimore Project, Seattle,
March, 2009.