oranges

by ivancheng

during TiNA 2010 (sep 30 – oct 4) i took part in the critical animals festival, working within a geodesic dome over 27 hours as part of the object manipulation research lab. the challenge of such an endurance work brought my mind to thoughts of health, security and ambition.  oranges, with their fibre, vitamins, and skin, have a really fantastic plasticity and seem impervious to the external.

What is health for? To inflict and assert is a given, but the abuse of health, whether awake or otherwise is not acceptable to me. Dealing with the orange as that fruit which is such an adaptable part of any culture, in slices, whole, processed, almost gingerly instrumental in creating a barrier, into which it so deliberately becomes through the structuring of the excess. The eventual structure which the peel will find is that of a dream boat, pallid and loose, worked to exhaustion, but becoming irrelevant because as its inhabitant one no longer things about the history of it – past inhabitants and all – until one considers its health.

The result was unhealthy levels of citric acid, with constipation tied in with a swelling of the belly giving way to brutal diarrhoea and illness, but with the overarcing impression was of the body rebelling, and in terms of its phases and stages, I couldn’t help but feel as though pregnant. The challenge was to remain focused over the 27 hour period, but as my body reacted more surprisingly than expected, the goal the audience saw and engaged readily with was the need to construct the ‘boat’ of orange peel

All images but final two staged with Lucy Parakhina