Scores for Rest

2021

Collectively-made, functional handkerchief artworks that describe personalized scores for resting

Made with apprentices and seasonal staff at the Dickinson College Farm

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With a group of farm workers, I wanted to consider the ways site-specificity informs the fields of collaborative art and agriculture. We talked about how the act of composition can be considered a shared method between collaborative art and agriculture, looking at the ways both disciplines require keen attention to specific contexts, variables, and relationships. Brief performance scores became an approachable way to begin to make these connections, and I asked the attendees of the workshop to enter into an experimental and investigative space by thinking about how they rest during the work day.

With this in mind, the students and apprentices wrote personal performance scores for short breaks from work onto the handkerchiefs, informed by their own expriences of labor, relationships to rest, and interpretations of their current place. The bandana-sized textiles were hand-sewn and divided into three sections (for those who wanted more structure).

Afterwards, each person traded scores with another and acivated the brief performances throughout the next week to experience rest from another person’s perspective. The handerchiefs could be worn or carried during the work day, which points toward the labor assumed by “rest.”