Levitate

Tim Collins
The Headlands Center for the Arts,
Sausalito California,
U.S.A.
1992

An artist is sitting on a sixteen-foot beam balanced eight feet out a third story window. A water trough on the other end of the beam is holding 22 gallons of water, it is leaking. The artist holds his balance against the diminishing weight of the water. Six tape recorders repeat over and over again with increasingly emotional intensity, “levitate.

A sense of balance is an essential skill.

• When we talk about balance it can refer to the artist’s life and his/her attempts to balance basic need with creative aspiration.
• We can talk about the metal balance that would drive an individual to sit on a beam outside a third floor window.
• We can discuss the compositional balance of the individual framed by the window juxtaposed against the hillside behind him.
• We can talk about the balance between the elemental forces of life both within the body and the role of water in the landscape one is not unlike the other, or of any less import.
• We can talk about the natural world supporting our societal lifestyle and economic well being, indeed it may seem one’s fate is connected to the other; hanging in balance so to speak.

The artist asked each visitor, “Next time you come, bring a gallon of your water; put it in the trough, as I am still reaching for the sky.”