top of page

Translation of Four Body Weights 1968

Franz Erhard Walther asks the public to physically engage with his sculptures activating them through wearing, touching, pulling and other physical gestures. Working predominantly with textiles he creates sculptures that need human influence to be realised. Four body weights was a performative artwork created In 1968, consisting of four people stretching a band of material to its extremities creating a square, their body weights supported equally by one another within the tension of the material.

At the time of this translation the term social distancing had never meant more to people, due to the restrictions imposed by the Covid 19 pandemic. A restricted proximity of 2m had become the normality. Looking at the original performance of Four Body Weights under the context of the present, its meaning had shifted. It was now a visual rendering of distance between human bodies. I could see the potential to recreate this work in a way that drew attention to this distance between people, the material sculpture clearly defining the physical and metaphorical space. I reduced the distance size of the original sculpture to 2.5 m just large enough to exceed the social distancing regulations of the time, this translation now comments on the present in the context of the current time. 

74004a5585b89d77fbb57ad82910967e.jpg
SCORE 1.png
SCORE 2.png
DSC00260 (3).JPG
DSC00257 (2).JPG
DSC00267 (2).JPG
bottom of page