Balance
Welcome to Exhibition #7
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Mary & Ilaria
01 — Perfectly Balanced — Priyanka Dangol — Arlington, Virginia
Inspired by Samin Nosrat's viral cookbook, Salt Fat Acid Heat, this stop motion intends to inspire users to find balance amongst the four essential culinary elements to create a harmonious meal.
02 — Ex Uno Plures — Grant — San Francisco, CA
Society finds its proper balance in plurality.
03 — Beyond a Binary Balance — Mary — Washington, D.C.
I struggled with this exploration. I didn’t know what to think, write, or make from it until late one night, after accepting there was nothing to “figure out” or “conclude, I began to draw.
While investigating my relationship with balance, I realized it’s lived as a binary in my mind.
I’m in or out of balance.
Balance is good.
Being out of balance is bad.
If that’s true, how come some of the most remarkable, delicate, precious, or unbelievable moments or feats require such imbalance? An obsession to detail, performance, or a reaching towards something that tips the scales dramatically one way.
What if living imbalanced is the prerequisite to identifying our truest passion or calling or that thing we enjoy doing to an unreasonable extent?
What if imbalance is our most trustworthy North Star? The spotlight shining on what’s so, to reveal to us what we’re committed to, whether we like it or not.
Perhaps balance is not something we have or have not. Perhaps instead a life in “balance” is one speckled with many ebbs and flows, lightness and darkness, beginnings and interruptions.
This video is less a conclusion and more of a question. What does your version of balance look like? Feel like? Sound like? What journey or rumble of things make up its character?
04 — rhythm of the week — ila — Netherlands
B reathe between the tasks you do,
A ll things need their moment too.
L earn to rest, not just achieve,
A day too full, a night to relieve
N o perfect formula, just a scheme
C herish calm in a hectic dream
E verything flows when balance leads”
“formatweekplan.xls”, this is the name of the excel file i had to fill in with my monthly routine by logging all the different things i was doing, between university, work, cooking, eating, cleaning, going to the gym, social life, sleeping, etc.. Questioning what are my needs versus what are my pleasures, are they connected? The objective was to notice where the emptiness was or wasn’t and try to understand if i liked how much of this space there was or if I wanted more/less of it. Manually labeling every hour of my day forced me to view how i was prioritising my time, which required a much needed change to find a balance. Balance in this context reflected finding equilibrium in a chaotic routine. Have I found this balance? I realised how balance can be a dynamic yet a constant silent necessity. I’m on a journey in finding this internal balance.
That concludes Exhibition #7. Thanks for stopping by!
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Up next we’re exploring what it means to let go. Join us & submit something by January 1st.
