ANTI-GRAVITY

This enquiry commenced with Momentary Fusion (1993- 2000), a performance company co-directed by Sophy Griffiths and Isabel Rocamora which was interested in the body in suspension in relation to site-specificity. From 2000, Rocamora deepened her investigation into what she called 'the anti-gravity body' and locational identity, creating a series of works for buildings such as the Victoria & Albert Museum and Tate Britain.

Anti-gravity choreography is a development of aerial performance. It uses the hanging body and its “subversion” of gravity as a metaphor for changing states of consciousness, paralleling the experience of weightlessness with freedom from the rational. Distinct from zero/ micro gravity (as experienced in parabolic flights), anti-gravity performance needs the force of gravity to move against.

The anti-gravity body expands through space, travelling as though it encountered no resistance, as if the matter of the body itself was no different from the air that it is moving in, as if it were rising and descending at one and the same time.