> STATEMENT
Fight Therapy
…is to explore an experience
that is simultaneously aggressive, strikingly symbiotic and awkwardly
frictional: an unorthodox form of collaboration that could otherwise be
described as human connectivity…
I was inspired by my
exhilarating and sometimes awkward experiences practicing close-contact martial
arts while living in various countries over a period of eight years.
Represented through a series of videos, drawings, and interviews, this project
explores the communication and aggression involved in intrapersonal,
interpersonal, and cross-cultural interactions.
I invite people who are
negotiating conflicts and communication difficulties (or are primarily
interested in an exercise in being physically present) to work with me in
developing a corporal conversation about their psychological struggle. For two
years I’ve worked with over fifty different people for a variety of reasons.
The culmination of their training results in a public or private grappling
match with the person, idea, or desire central to their inquiry. I am both fight
therapist and referee.
Although I teach techniques
(with names like Bridging and Rolling, Taking the Back, Rear-Naked Choke,
Triangle Choke, Arm Bar, etc.) and lay down some rules: no biting, scratching,
eye-gouging, or knees to the groin, I don’t script or choreograph the live
grappling match. For people who don’t normally practice ground fighting,
experiencing the physicality of grappling is a way to be outside normal codes
of conduct, in a place where unpredictably strange, ungraceful and beautiful
moments can happen.
www.fighttherapy.com
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