How Do We Hold Each Other Up?
06 Jun—22 June (17 dates)
Greater Glasgow & Clyde Exhibition Workshop
Event Summary
Experience the reciprocity of counterbalance
Event Website
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11:00 - 17:00
Date(s)
06 Jun—22 June
Location
The Briggait, 72 Clyde Street, Glasgow G1 5HZ
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Additional Location Info
Level access throughout with accessible WC.
Organiser
Janice Parker
COUNTERBALANCE is RECIPROCITY in action.
When two or more people engage physically in the act of counterbalance they are giving and receiving, holding and being held, in a constant dialogue of exchange, cooperation, negotiation and support. They are literally holding each other up
Counterbalancing is a functional movement action where two human bodies lean against or away from each other in a process of active and dynamic physical listening to find moments of shared suspension, balance and repose; each person adjusting to small shifts in weight, balance, musculature and skeletal structure as they unfold between them.
This is not a metaphor for reciprocity but a direct experiential embodiment of it.
A biological physiological innate intelligence taking us beyond representation or conceptualisation, words or thoughts, to felt, real-time, lived experience - a foundational knowing in our bones and our being.
This is a quiet space inviting you to sit with and experience counterbalance in words and film.
A looped silent film of five movement studies inviting the viewer to witness bodies viscerally searching for and finding the points of counter balance between them
The filming was led by the movement in an hour long workshop, with the different cameras capturing live, unrehearsed duets, experimenting with ways images can be created intimately, and felt through the lens. The camera operators moving with, under, over and among the performers.
Accompanying the films is a collection of handwritten texts created in response to the films, the workshop and to the wider propositions contained in the movement of counterbalance
Dance Artist Janice Parker will occasionally inhabit the work quietly offering the opportunity to share in a moment of counterbalance
This is part of Janice Parker and Emmie McLuskeys on-going collaborative work which focuses on the politics of movement and the body, where and how we are allowed to move, the inter-relationship between body, space and design, the movements we value over other movement, and the commodification and regulation of movement that is rightfully ours.
Janice Parker will also perform as part of the Opening Party! for the Architecture Fringe 2025.
