04/06/2014, + Window, Onsite o Hannah Valentine - "Racquet Service".

Window, Onsite
Hannah Valentine Racquet Service
With text by Ashleigh Wilding

In Racquet Service, Valentine addresses Ancient Greek notions of the joy of striving, the push to be more than one is, through manipulation of the body in conjunction with the mind. With the modern rise of gym-culture in urban landscapes, mixed with increasingly virtual interactions, the dualism between mind and body seems as pertinent as ever, it calls to be re-addressed.

Cast, manipulated weightlifting bars lean casually against the wall, or stand upright, anthropomorphic due to their bodily scale. A sterile gym environment is replaced with one where objects bear traces of the hands that made them. Situated at the entrance to Auckland University's General Library, a place of knowledge, of learning, a conversation opens around the construction of one's self.

To shape the entire self is a concept that dates to Greek antiquity, the search for arte a driving factor in the construction of an ethically beautiful life. Nowadays there is an excessive reliance on our visual sense due to the seduction and hyper-reality of digital media, isolating visual from physical into a hierarchy where the need for physical interaction with the world is in decline. To counter hyper-engagement in the virtual realm gyms are like a prescription, a well needed fix.

Exercising only for health, however, as philosopher Damon Young writes, "can worsen the very dualism that led to a sedentary lifestyle in the first place; we behave as if we were minds servicing bodies, like a sports repairman fixing a racquet". The need to ompartmentalize actions for greater efficiency, to measure achievement, takes hold for 30 MINUTES OF PURE GRIT, before ticking "body" off the checklist.