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2 human participants/subjects, each inclined at 60 degrees, held in angular suspension by each other’s weight. I was also thinking of hackneyed trust-building exercises that one might encounter during team-building events.

Four people, including myself are suspended in varying positions from supine to upright in harnesses and slings using geared rope-pulleys counterweighted by sewing machines, they are in turn tended by four other people. I use a dozen sewing machines ranging in size and mass from 150lb (7-class harness machine) to around 50lb (31-class standard early 20th cent. Industrial machine) to 20lb early home sewing machine to the singer featherweight portable machines which weight under ten pounds, while they differ in size they share the essential “Black Singer” form and nostalgically remind us of everything from domesticity and polite accomplishment (with all of its complex problems of unpaid work and patriarchy) to industrial sweat-shop labour. The industrialists in the heat of the Industrial Revolution understood that due to technological advancement, their machines would be redundant in as little as three years. In order to justify their investment, they would have to run their machines day and night, which led to 24-hour shift work (which is in itself inhumane), the labour shortage that ensued, precipitated an explosion in child labour in Europe as well as fostering the dehumanizing notion that people are inferior to capital. A notable illustration of this devaluation of human life was the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, New York City’s deadliest industrial disaster claiming the lives of 146 garment workers, mostly recent immigrants between ages 16-23, many of whom jumped to their deaths because the exits were locked to prevent theft and unauthorized breaks. In Bangladesh in 2013, Rana Plaza collapsed, killing 1134 garment workers. The building had been declared unsafe. Banks and stores in the plaza were closed, but the 5000 garment workers were threatened with termination if the did not show up for work. As consumers, we are at least culpable in this continuing tragedy

Of all the utensils that attend the preparation, serving and consumption of food, the spoon is the most intimate, pushing beyond the barrier of lips and teeth, entering the cavity of the mouth in order to deliver its contents. It is also universal, whichever utensils are culturally or personally favored, the spoon is invariably included. It is remarkable how easily food is transformed from the necessity of nutrition into a means of exchange, a threat, weapon or display of means. As a commodity, the market is interested in quantity with little or no attention paid to how delicious, fragrant or nutritious the food may be. Prices are determined by demand, profits may be extracted from distortions or imbalances in demand and supply. An international commodity market leads inevitably to “rationalized” production, concentration and reliance on particular growing regions, agri-business, precipitating monoculture, soil depletion and labour exploitation.  Transnational corporations further degrade biodiversity, developing and patenting grains and seeds that work exclusively with proprietary herbicides and fertilizers. The rationale, according to their public relations professionals, is that all this is necessary to feed the Earth and its people, this ignores the fact that one third of annual global food production goes to waste. Hunger is a result of ineffective distribution rather than production. The patent is a technology for hoarding intellectual “property” and certainly not a means of food distribution. 
We cannot ignore the use of arable land for cultivating non-food crops such as cotton, corn syrup and bio-fuels. These pressures squeeze out sustainable and subsistence farming methods, creating regional food shortages, inequality and promoting labour exploitation as the Earth and its people need nutritional food and humane working and living conditions.

Subject (me) hoisted, about to be lowered into bag As my work became more complex with multiple participants, my role in the performances changed from subject to orchestrator, I wanted to get back to a simple act where I would be the person facing the dilemma. Compound Balance consists of 2 sturdy bags. One contains a bound person and the other, a counterweight filled with sand that escapes in a slow trickle from a funnel in the bottom of the bag. Both bags are suspended by a balance mechanism with a lever mechanism that favours the counterweight bag. The bag containing the person closed by a scissor mechanism that stays locked under tension. As long as there is sufficient mass in the counterweight, the person remains locked and suspended in the bag and must wait for enough sand to escape in order to equalize the weight and release the lock.

As my work became more complex with multiple participants, my role in the performances changed from subject to orchestrator, I wanted to get back to a simple act where I would be the person facing the dilemma. Compound Balance consists of 2 sturdy bags. One contains a bound person and the other, a counterweight filled with sand that escapes in a slow trickle from a funnel in the bottom of the bag. Both bags are suspended by a balance mechanism with a lever mechanism that favours the counterweight bag. The bag containing the person closed by a scissor mechanism that stays locked under tension. As long as there is sufficient mass in the counterweight, the person remains locked and suspended in the bag and must wait for enough sand to escape in order to equalize the weight and release the lock.

The work was included in a show at the Baltimore Museum of Art, but it was clear that they could not accommodate the performative aspect of the piece. I installed it as static installation
 
I was interested in how the meaning would change or persist without the dynamism of performance or with the change in environment from an industrial space to a polished museum interior