The score for Janice Kerbel\u2019s Sink<\/em> (2018) challenges a synchronized swimmer\u2019s hyper-vigilant dancer-self to tune in. Though audience members may see the work as impeccable, Kerbel\u2019s choreography is not as stylized and technical as a typical synchronized swimming performance. Sink<\/em> forces its athletes to soften and deflate the performer inside, to flail more, to just be. Simple binaries like breathing and not breathing, holding limbs taut versus limp, or splashing versus sinking in hushed descent, punctuate the piece. Kerbel\u2019s interest lies in the women being themselves and the pool being what it is. The Western Baths Club is an informal venue compared to usual sites for synchronized swimming performances. Enveloped in the thick smell of chlorine, audience members watched from benches positioned alongside the pool or the balcony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a series of prints titled Notes from Sink<\/em> (2018), the performance record and score are made static with stamps that translate women\u2019s bodies into minimalist geometric graphics \u2014 circles, lines, and triangles. The images convey rhythm but fail to represent the variability that comes with live performance. In Kerbel\u2019s score, performers aren\u2019t always in perfect sync. This must be jarring for some of the women who are used to moving in unison with others. Precision, strength, control, and timing are eased as Sink<\/em> posits sport as a connective tissue that places emphasis on collaborative work as a force outlasting slip-ups. Glitches and dissimilarities between the positioning of limbs and forms give this moving structure a singular life. The pool as backdrop is an unstable, responsive architecture, an amorphous ground for capturing lapses without storing them. The tension between the integrity of the collective body and the resistance to perfection\/conformity compels us to reflect on how water\u2019s real-time feedback immediately forgets and contrasts with humans, with no account of lapses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sink <\/em>is an attempt to transform a highly formal, stylized, and technical art into a minimal, stripped-down performance using the pool as a playground where questions about discipline and collaboration, desire and being can be explored. Undoing is its own sport, for it is dedicated to those who return daily for hours of practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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