runcityrun:

Le Va ran back and forth between two opposite walls 15-m [50 ft] apart, impacting violntly against the walls before hurling himself back into space, until he was no longer able to go on. After the performance, evidence of the piece was visible on the blood-spattered walls and in the stereo sound recording. As Le Va explained to curator Liza Bear,

“The energy drain was one of the main purposes of this piece, and that of course increased with time until I was worn out and couldn’t move at all…every part of me ended up being used.”

[Barry Le Va. ‘…a continuous flow of fairly aimless movement’. 1971]

Investigating the relationship between his physical energy and endurance and the external space of an architecturally constructed environment, Le Va used the sound recording to expand the viewer’s perceptual awareness of this relationship.”

(Warr, T. & Jones, A. [eds] (2006) The Artist’s Body. London: Phaidon Press Ltd.)