Stretch is a site-specific and audience-participatory work constructed from strands of elastic, individually hooked to stakes in the ground along one side of the site, stretched over several tree branches and anchored together in one place on the other side. Two belts with five hooks stitched to the back of each, allow participants wearing these belts to unhitch up to five strands of elastic and attach them to the hooks enabling direct bodily interaction with the work, pushing and pulling in various directions.

Tensions and strains are felt as the elastic is stretched between the branches and their bodies as they move within the work. Two people can simultaneously interact with the work, creating new patterns of stress and tension. Stretch is anchored in the site at Tarumitra, making links between the earth and the trees and their rooted­ness in the earth. It is a meditation on time, and of the frustrations and tensions of life. In this work the lines of elastic are multi-variant and can be re-directed at will. Standing within the space defined by the elastic, the tree branches and the earth-ing function of the ground where all the elastic strips find their end-point; one can feel a sense of space set apart, defined and yet open to possibilities.

A disjuncture in understanding notions of time between the West and the East – linear and finite, and non-linear and infinite, respectively – underpins this work. The notion of IST, Indian Standard Time also known as Indian Stretchable Time also informed this work with elastic becoming the perfect vehicle to coalesce these ideas.