Four women sit embroidering on an endless piece of fabric, trying to work out how to rest.
Combining personal testimony, performance and lots and lots of lost needles, Experiments in Rest attempts to break through the noise of our hyper-stimulated hustle culture.
Four performers slowly reveal their innermost thoughts and the threads that bind them, whilst trying to maintain focus on a simple, yet pain-staking task.
An evolving work charting questions of wellbeing, community and the urgency of slowing down, the fabric serves as a living performance document. Everyday, our still, quiet, unproductive work slips, invisible, into its folds.
A protest against productivity and in defence of care and female solidarity, this performance asks: what does it mean to stop? To take time out? To sit still? And why now, more than ever, do we need to talk about rest?
Picture by Sheila Burnett
PERFORMANCE AND CONCEPT:
COLLECTIVE BREAK (Kate Ireland, Imogen Kennedy, Bridget Russon, Emilia Schlosser)
SHOWS
1.&.2.07.2022 Blisters Festival, Goldsmiths University London
18.03.2023 SPRINT Festival
26,-29.05.2023 OUT NOW! Festival Bremen
For the full video documentation please email wirbeidekollektiv@posteo.de