The Spiral 2024, 11:35
Materials: dirt, 40lb Rice Bag
"The Spiral" is a piece that simulates the process of recognition as a productive contributor to the US, examined through physicality and physical endurance. By placing into metaphors the fundamental aspects of "productive" life-- food, neighborhood, and direction-- I trudged in a downward spiral toward my collapse at the bottom. The Spiral is an ongoing performance series in which the artist carries a 40-lb bag of rice while slowly traversing a spiral path, entering and exiting at the same point so that exhaustion, rather than progress, is the only outcome of the labor. By utilizing embodied strain, time, and repetition, my piece critiques capitalist notions of productivity, success, and progress by foregrounding exhaustion and empathy as meaningful forms of labor. Across different sites and iterations, the piece reframes productivity as relational and reflective, positioning empathy and bodily awareness as central to community and social understanding.
Here is my view of the street when I was at the bottom of the spiral. This piece was site-specific to Logan Square, as it is one of the most gentrified and exclusive neighborhoods in Chicago. As this spiral puts you at eye level with the ground, I ask audiences to take on a necessary perspective in considering their home's history and to study the grounds they claim to be home.
THE SPIRAL: PAPER
In the second rendition of the Spiral, I present a more direct approach to alternative research of labor, in a productive balance of quantitative, qualitative, primary, and secondary research, to honestly recognize the distance between me and a social condition of labor. As an artist, Asian American woman, and American citizen, I am privileged in being able to choose the kind of labor I dedicate my life to, in way that is inherently self-fulfilling, and thus my experience to my topic is synthetic. With this rendition, I questioned how I could ensure my integrity in creating an effective piece, and find for whom my project is in reality impacting. While physical empathy can be emotionally impactful, the four hours in which I performed this is incomparable to experiencing this level of physical exhaustion daily, and for the sake of ones own livelihood.
Thus, this time taking I’m putting my research methods on the stand, and taking into consideration conditions in which statistical research, city red tape, and bureaucratic interference effect my own quantitative research, and my own actions in remaining close to this project as an artist. I am restricted to this spiral, the red tape bonding the screenshots of collected visualized statistical data— quantitative methods of depicting race, religion, gender, and income levels of those who experience homelessness, gentrification, and recent ICE raids at the time of the performance, alongside histories of labor and worker unions within Chicago-- in which I am physically forced to look at as I walk.
In hindsight to the performance of this, the dizziness I felt from spinning in a compact space made the experience much more overwhelming, as I struggled to remain balanced on the red tape with weakening strength. As I viewed what was below me, I couldn’t help but wonder, can staged performances be an adequate method of research to accurately simulate the symptom of exhaustion that is so deeply rooted in systemic racism, corruption, and classism? I am indoors in an air-conditioned, with water and a cafeteria below me, and onlookers paying attention to me as they walk by— I had disrespected the context in which research can be utilized to directly impact those in which my work was attributed for, however this display of exhaustion calls out to an issue deeply engrained into our everyday lives, exhaustive success and productivity. Similar to the politics of peaceful protests and public demonstrations, the spectacle of the experience can becomes relevated, and makes itself vulnerable to commodification— another article and that is not quickly enough a policy, a performative manifesto.
THE SPIRAL: Plaza
