Sweat it Out, created in collaboration with Caitlin Foley and Misha Rabinovich, offered free Wintertime public access to a beautiful handmade mobile sauna, along with opportunities to commune around the shared stressor of rapid gentrification in the city of Boston.
The sauna experience was extended through an immersive “lounge,” which offered a library, sauna-brewed tea, a changing area and shower, plus many evolving, communally produced projects, such as a live-processed sound feed from the sauna; a bulletin board for sharing community concerns and announcements; a crystal vessel full of communally-produced sweat; sweat prints on Ph-sensitive paper; and a video collection of everyone’s sweaty backs merging into an endless stream of sweaty backs.
These environmental elements created a relaxed, colorful atmosphere for informal and professionally facilitated experiences ranging from a custom board game about landlord-tenant relations, to a visioning session imagining alternative futures for Boston, to an ancestor-honoring ceremony that recognized the site’s deep past. The project closed with a sweaty dance party with live DJs.
Sweat it Out was set in Fort Point’s Seaport District, where rapid real estate development presented immediate fodder for conversations about Boston’s conflicted desires for growth and authentic local character. The gallery/lounge space was housed in one of Boston’s newest luxury hotels, directly adjacent to the site of the famous Boston Tea Party.
Sweat it Out was made possible with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ Creative City Program and received additional support from Boston Cyberarts, Blue Hills Bank, DigBoston, The DS Institute, The Fort Point Arts Community, and The University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
Photo credit: Lani Asuncion (except for Polaroids, taken by the artists.)