The power of actions

Video—Performance

2012

Rolling Up is a video performance born from a question: How much effort, conviction, and time does it take to complete a simple task? The answer unfolded in real time, unrehearsed, in a narrow hall with a wire tied to my waist and anchored above me. The objective was deceptively clear: to “roll myself up” to the top, untie the wire, and descend.

Shot in grainy black and white, the piece captures the raw immediacy of failure, adaptation, and reinterpretation. I pushed my body against the narrow hallway walls, contorted myself in search of leverage, and tested gravity’s resistance. At one point, I believed the task required me to literally rotate my body—perform pirouettes, flips, or impossible feats of flexibility—because of the literal weight of the verb “roll.” I had misunderstood my own instructions.

And yet, as I climbed upward, wire wrapping around my waist with each pull, I began to reframe the task. To “roll up” did not have to mean rolling over. What mattered was completing the journey: reaching the top, undoing the knot, and returning with the wire unspooled. The performance revealed something quiet but profound — that meaning is not always fixed, that tasks are shaped by how we interpret their language, and that brute force is not always the path to resolution.

This was never meant to be polished. Rolling Up was a genuine experiment in body, thought, and will — a metaphor for self-imposed pressure, misunderstood expectations, and the subtle victory of understanding over performance.

[ Recorded Performance ]