A monitor is mounted on a pedestal showing an elastic cord being stretched. When an elastic cord is stretched it changes its shape to suit the requirements when the external force stops, the elastic cord returns to its original shape. This temporary deformation stage is called the elastic phase. If the demand continues to increase, however, the material becomes stressed to the point of no return. This stage is known as yielding, and from this moment on the material will no longer be able to return to its original shape. Somehow the cord's memory is erased.
In Loading the yield point of an elastic cord is never reached despite the external force, my presence outside the frame, pulling until exhaustion. Once my maximum effort is reached, the cord returns to its original state. The initial goal of this performance was to bring the rope to its point of no return, the yield point, the moment that marks the end of its elastic behavior and the beginning of the plastic phase of the rope—in other words, its fracture. This breaking never happens, therefore its gesture is devoid of a climax and of a consequent catharsis. Instead the energetic movement is circular and deeply entropic. In fact, the gesture, which does not lead to any evident result, means that, with the passing of time, the energies lavished in the attempt are reabsorbed and discharged from my body that, without achieving its aim, will soon have to give up and declare itself defeated by the elasticity of the cord.
Inside the screen the rope slowly stretches and tenses, leading to an almost hypnotic vision. The longer we wait, the more we forget what we are looking at. Loading something is charging, everything is in power, everything is expected to happen, everything can happen. Momentum in power, like a spinning coin that never lands and that we watch spin, waiting for the result. But in the end, after all this I realize that this loading is the real present.