This architecturally inventive work is an unfolding of a human body attempting to make a slow, gradual, controlled fall backwards. Body and building architecture are compared within a precarious relationship, trying to find moments of balance, which are lost to the ungainly. Hand holds and eye holds are searched out and found, as the stair rope is clasped and the audiences’ gaze met with specific holds and releases.
This performance was originally created for a Victorian stone staircase in Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, as part of Marina Abramovic Presents… at Manchester International Festival. For City of Women 2010 in Ljubljana another staircase, that one at Gruberjeva Palace, was used in a remaking of Stair Falling. The performance lasted approximately four hours.
