EVE BAILEY /// “The Body is Plastic”: Negotiating with Gravity

Eve Bailey and I recorded this conversation in her studio in Crown Heights (Brooklyn) surrounded by her tools and artworks. We talk about her work that consistently engages the body to ‘conquer’ the sculptures she constructs with her own hands. We also discuss about how, despite the fact that her pieces are based on her own body, each body has a chance to appropriate them with no prejudice — their aesthetics allowing so — and eventually find a point of equilibrium, unique for each body. Toward the end of the podcast, she talks about her current research that explores association of her understanding of the body with cognitive science and neurology.

Eve Bailey is a sculptor whose work focuses on the concepts of balance and coordination. She sees the body as a perceiving structure and is profoundly interested in how physical awareness fosters creativity. She builds kinetic devices and ergonomic sculptures that serve to express the elegance of a gesture, a finite moment of equilibrium, combining her love for architecture and dance into a single body of work that speaks to our environment and our human potential.

WEBSITE:

– http://evebailey.net

PRELIMINARY ARTICLE ON THE FUNAMBULIST:

– “Designing Gravity: Five Young Designers & the Body” (June 7, 2013)

REFERENCE BOOK:

– Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, Penguin Books, 2007.
– Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Mariner Books, 2003.
– Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (1677)

REFERENCE ARTICLE:

– Eve Bailey, “The Groundbreaking Clarity of Ryan and Trevor Oakes” (April 2012) for The Funambulist Papers: Volume 1 (Punctum Books, 2013)
– Jeff Hawkins, “How Brain Science will Change Computing” (February 2003)

ARTWORK BY EVE BAILEY: