Through my performance project Heat Stress, I meditate on the lengths we stretch to feel better by enacting a physical embodiment of a cycle of healing through testing my body’s mental and physical endurance in the sauna. 

The sauna is espoused as a site of deep physical and mental healing. The experience of healing at the site, however, is often far from comfortable. When the body’s internal temperature is raised higher than its baseline for an extended period of time and the body isn’t able to come down to baseline, the body enters heat stress. I chose the sauna as the site for my performance because the cycles of intense heating and cooling achieved by sauna use emulates the cycles of healing that I am interested in enacting.

The guidelines I set for my performance were as follows. The performance will take place at the Wellesley Sauna on a Sunday. In the performance, I will turn the sauna on high and enter, staying as long as I am able. Then, I will leave the sauna and sit in the cool hallway, drink water, or take a cool shower. I will repeat this cycle until I am no longer able to. I will not speak to anyone while performing this piece. 

In my piece, I wanted to capture the experience of trying to work out a question: how can we find healing through discomfort, rather than in spite of it? I do not find the answer in the performance, but simply give myself the space to ask the question and begin to unravel it. 

The performance will be documented using 35 mm color film with Kodak Ultramax stock. Taking a photo every 2.5 minutes by other artists, Idie Park and Berit Raines, to document the body’s exhaustion and breakdown through continuous cycles of stress and relief. Marking time like this was essential to create a visual narrative displaying how action repeats itself within the cycles of healing. 

My endless gratitude to Idie Park for photographing this project. Without her dedicated support through my performance process, this project would not have been possible.