SARA DITTRICH: THE TENDER INTERVAL

Sara Dittrich’s The Tender Interval creates a meditative experience that encourages the audience to slow down, engage in sensory perception, and find poetic refuge in moments of crisis. This newly commissioned series of multi-sensory experiences uses the body’s circulatory system as a means of fielding questions about close listening and ecological healing. Through her work, Dittrich engages in repetitive gestures, video, and sculpture to focus on the body’s circadian rhythms using biosensors as performative objects to track heartbeats and footsteps. The Tender Interval offers participants (and viewers) an opportunity to slow down and meditate on how the pace of our bodies’ physical processes are often determined by our surroundings. 

This virtual project builds on Dittrich’s past works Turn of the Tide (2019) and Going/Staying (2014) in which she uses interactive bio-sensors to record everyday rhythms of life. The Tender Interval features two different durational performances designed and choreographed by Dittrich, with opportunities for viewers to activate the works online in real-time through coded Twitch Chat commands.

HOW TO WATCH & PARTICIPATE

All activities will be live-streamed via Sara Dittrich Twitch.TV Channel. Performances will run from September 23 – November 14, 2020 (see the schedule listed to the right; live performances will be recorded and archived for later viewing).

Anyone may watch the live-stream, but in order to participate and interact with the performances, you must have a free Twitch account. To create an account, view the instructions here.

Once you have an account, you can type into the Twitch chatbox on Sara’s channel (located to the right of the live video). Type the text commands you see listed on the live video screen to interact with the performance. (Ex. Type “!changescene” into the chat box to change the background in the treadmill performance.)

 WATCH WITH GUIDED MEDITATION

A companion meditation guide designed by Dittrich features 35-pages of original images created by exposing plants and body parts to sunlight through the cyanotype printing process.

It is available online as a free PDF download, or the limited-edition, made-to-order booklet may be purchased for $100. To purchase, please email [email protected] with the subject “The Tender Interval.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Sara Dittrich is an interdisciplinary sculpture artist based in Baltimore, Maryland. She creates introspective environments that spark empathy and connectedness through the use of musical performance, video, and interactive electronic technologies. Dittrich has exhibited her work at notable venues including the Baltimore Museum of Art; Washington Project for the Arts, DC; and Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI. Selected residencies include the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; Sculpture Space, Utica, NY; and the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2014.