Swing Piece
Durational Works
Green Street Gallery, Jamaica Plan Massachusetts
October 29th 2004
Task: To swing, be in contact with the swing for twelve hours.
Begin time: 7:15am
End Time: 7:00 pm
Total time: eleven hours and forty-five minutes.
A Polaroid was taken every 30 minutes according to a given score

This swing is a solid piece of cherry fashioned by my brother Jake. He and my Dad hung it on the oak tree in our backyard for my 12th birthday. As an early teen I spent hours on this swing, flying through the air, hanging upside-down, existing in a world of my own.

Since that time my brother has passed away, my parents have separated, I have moved, and we have lost the house that I spent the second ten years of my life growing up in. I spent a day and a night in the house after everything had been moved out. In the morning I cut the ropes to the swing.

Leaving behind frayed ends blowing in the wind.

Now I return to this piece of wood and the act of swinging. I return to reminisce, to hang, to whip around and disorient.

To watch.
And dream.
And wait.
A whole day in retrospect begins to seem so very short.