Intensification Machine

Intensification Machine is a performative, experimental installation-in-progress taking place at RuptureXIBIT now through 21 January.

watch the video below of the first spontaneous performance from inside the Intensification Machine, live and evolving through 21 January. Visit rupturexibit.com for open hours.

There is a beauty in the wielding of the broom, an intensity of experience: of being able to fold over, pick something up off the floor. The energy it takes to scrub the studio, to scrub the gallery, to clean and prepare to make or install work, before we even get to the work itself, is enormous.

I remember seeing a task ahead of me as a job, now I am in love with labour. The act of transformation through labor, even from dirty to clean, messy to organized, light to dark, dark to light, human to inhuman, female to male, every moment of effort is suddenly a tiny fizzy bubble effervescing off the surface of my skin. Washing the floor feels like poprocks mixed with Dr. Pepper in my mouth: I’ve heard it can kill you, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take, the sensation is too delicious not to fall into. And I can’t help but notice… everything.

As I enter into this period of intense slow noticing, I notice my desire for speed, efficiency, production running parallel: the engine of the Result. I thrill at my ability to juggle plates, multi task, become, be, do, exist, produce. Simultaneously, there is a fractured, prismatic view which exposes each movement as suspended, worthy of investigation in its own right. This sometimes makes me feel ecstatic, or silly, or surprised.

To fold, to fall to one’s knees to scrape to clean, the act of scrubbing.

The gendered act of cleaning a home, a cleaning woman, having a girl in, the gendered act of janitorial work of the industrial space, the scrubbing and prepping, keys dangling from a retractable lanyard, tired competence from both.

But scrubbing is joy

a spark of fullness of overfullness of my body moving through space and exerting its will on the spot on the floor – is that a piece of brown painter’s tape? A complete and total absorption in the moment, the task of peeling back, examining the detritus of before while making room for the next, the new.

Intimacies with my body, with the floor, with the dirt on the floor, with the implement of cleaning, with the outside world, with the universe of the transforming container, both myself, and the work, and the space: at full speed, at double speed at a very slow speed.

The work has begun. The intensification machine is spinning up to speed, like a collider, like it can create the possibility of critical mass, of rupture.