RESISTANCE TRAINING
Resistance requires strength, to turn away or abstain from certain action. Conceived as a form of opposition or confrontation, it requires taking or making a stand, refusing to be moved. To resist is to reject then, to counter-act, to operate contrary to the norm or expectation. External pressures create the conditions according to which the body must acquiesce, contravene or somehow work around. Yet, resistance can also cultivate capacity, empower, augment. Small acts of minor resistance increase incrementally the body’s inner strength. With practice, muscle matter can be trained to transform the resistance of other forces into its own. Gradually, greater pressures can be applied and still converted. Care must be taken though, for without caution the body becomes dense and hardened, insensitive to the affect of subtler force. Attuning oneself to the intensity of a force is different to feeling its weight. It is often easier to recognise the greater the impingement, experience that which is felt to be heavy or hard to bear. Lesser pressures often go unnoticed, so are tolerated, not transformed. Attend to the micro level, for it is through the turning of imperceptible forces that true action might then emerge.
From Emma Cocker, The Yes of the No, (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2016), p. 86. Extract of a text that was previously published in Manual, an artists’ bookwork produced in collaboration with performance artist and writer Victoria Gray, (2014).