Re: “gains”, “sets” and “reps”… (between bodybuilding and body-language), 2018

Isabella Hone-Saunders

This work began by examining the commonalities between ballet and bodybuilding. (And it became a dedication to my membership at Doherty’s gym, Brunswick.)

It is reasonable to view both as unsustainable practices, which desperately aim for what most would consider to be unattainable forms. Both require obsessive focus, sometimes, resulting in disproportionate muscle groups.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1975 publication, ‘Body Shaping for Women’, outlined exercises to “empower” women. This program became part of my common routine, five to six times per week for five weeks. I saw a personal trainer who translated Arnie’s program to a contemporary gym setting.

I signed up to Doherty’s; a tough, equipment heavy space, where the walls are covered with inspirational images of pumped up physiques. All equipment set facing large flat-screen wallmounted tvs playing repeat reels of body-shaping competitions and infomercials. To distract and motivate: to compare, consume and capitalise from.

Observations of, and comparison to, peripheral bodies informed my understanding of my own strength, hierarchical position and how far I was willing to extend myself each session. Interrogating my relationship with discipline, and in that arriving at the gratification of physical punishment¹ , was one challenge.

1. “To punish is to exercise.” - Michel Foucault, ‘Discipline and punish’, 180, 1975.

Another was finding verbal/written language and body/performed language to convey my experience in order to create a tangible/decipherable ‘result’ or artwork. As Kathy Acker asserts in ‘Against Ordinary Language: The Language of The Body’, in this space there is a rejection of ‘ordinary’ or verbal language to allow space for a meditative practice based on counting, exerting and failing.² What results is finding oneself without access to ready-formed language.

2. Kathy Acker, ‘Against Ordinary Language: The Language of The Body’, 20- 21, 1992.

This work considers body-dysmorphia, body-idolisation, body-focus, body-worship.

I found pleasure in observing surrounding humans and their relationship with equipment - tenderness with apparatus - frustration at the point of muscle exhaustion - the pursuit of failure - and protocol surrounding the selection of which weight in what order.

It was difficult to deny which bodies felt entitled to more space, to make more noise, to make more sweat, more scent. And it was difficult to ignore the potentiality of these as violent acts.

This research (training) period allowed for an insight into a complex space previously unknown to me. I began to see this gym as an equally intimidating and welcoming environment. And as an important, curious meeting place for individuals of differently able, gendered/non-gendered, classed, race-identified, communities.

I felt the type of understanding that exists in the collective commonality of a similar pursuit; that we were all there to exercise. To get “gains” do “sets” and “reps”.

Isabella Hone-Saunders is currently practicing as a curator, arts worker and artist in Narrm (so-called melbourne), on the unceded lands and water ways of the Boonwurrung and Woiwurrung (Wurundjeri) people of the Kulin nation.
Her curatorial practice is concerned with accessibility, representation and shared social responsibility, while examining with criticality, the inclusivity of public art spaces. She aims to interrogate modes and implement methodologies towards an ethical and activist informed curation.