PENDULUM is an expansive performance installation created by percussive artist Matthias Schack-Arnott and choreographer Lucy Guerin.
Performers roam amongst a field of moving pendulums that each consist of a suspended bell that tolls, pulses and hums. As they rush through the air in visceral sweeps of sound and light, the music is driven by the speed and force of their motion.
Performers activate the bells; hurling, catching, stopping, spinning, dodging and resisting the swing in their dance with gravity. The power and vulnerability of the human body is revealed through these attempts to control the relentless rise and fall of the pendulum’s weight in this eternally moving frame.
An instrument of physics and mathematics the pendulum is both abstract and physical. It’s an agent of gravity and a metronome, manifesting through timing, momentum and movement. The repetitive nature of the pendulum’s arc defines so many aspects of human experience. Day turns to night in a seemingly endless cycle as ideas, events and movements emerge and recede from history only to return again. The rise and fall of the pendulum evokes time as a continuum that stretches behind us and before us, situating our bodies in a fleeting moment on earth.
Commissioned by RISING’s A Call to Artists initiative.