This performance is part of our annual Performance Art Week (PAW), in its twelfth edition in 2024. For more information on PAW, click here.

Originally conceived of as a sort of 'loneliness gym,' Working on Myself constructs a premise where performers engage with a series of contraptions--gym equipment, household objects that have been outfitted with cast silicone hands and reimagined to apply various forms of touch--repeating reps at each circuit indefinitely.  Of course the machines in this loneliness gym are failures, but through repetition of the failure, perhaps failure transforms into something resembling routine. As the performers work on themselves, seemingly oblivious of each other while sharing close proximity, trying really hard, and doing everything just a little bit wrong, they lean into the absurd idea that with enough hard work and discipline, they can each cure loneliness on their own.  And while they seek material solutions to their existential problem, on occasion they sync up into choreographed movements, (similar to how a school of fish swim in unison or a flock of starlings murmurates, individuals becoming part of a whole system, slipping into human nature despite a constructed system of alienation), they beg the question: How much will we contort ourselves to uphold these systems?