ROSHANA RUBIN MAYHEW

Feeling the Blues is a 12-hold blues, a work in three movements performed over three months. In each, a bodyweight of clay is wrestled-with through a score of 12 wrestling holds. A suit is worn, and the sounds generated are mixed live, riffing with breath, thud, shuffle, rub, strut, hold. In Movement I, the clay is malleable – held, stretched and body-slammed through each hold. For Movement II, the dried bodyweight of clay, hardened and resonant with how it was held, is broken down through the rub and friction of the body. Movement III gathers up the pieces; through grinding and wetting, the remains return a malleable bodyweight of clay, rocked n rolled into motion. Roshana Rubin Mayhew investigates how to tune into and creatively hold weight and the weighty. The performance embraces the indeterminacy of the live, tapping into and feeling through its rhythms, rubs and sweet spots. In this way, the work is steeped in the erotics of the Blues, in all its queer swagger, and the affective territory of poetics. Sound is mixed, bent and stretched live in collaboration with music producer Wayne Adams. Feeling the Blues invites you to lean in and co-compose this live space, this living tissue of sensation.

Whitechapel Gallery
London Open Live
June-August 2025

Movement I – June 2025
A bodyweight of malleable clay was wrestled-with through a score of 12 wrestling holds. Tender, aggressive, erotic, violent. Each hold was timed at 3 minutes, metered by the exclamation hold to start and HOLD stop. The score moved hold-by-hold across 3 pages and 2 page turns. The clay, wrestling mat, and room were miked. The holds generated sound, which was live mixed by music producer Wayne Adams.

Movement II – July 2025
The same bodyweight of clay, dried and resonant with how it was held, was broken down through the rub and friction of the body. The suit was tailored with sandpaper and a pocket hand saw, or clay cutting wire. The holds were again scored across 3 pages and 2 page turns. They were moved through more freely page-to-page, echoes of the first movement as they bowed the clay, percussing through chimed touches, bass drum bodyslams, and the brushes of frictional embraces and a sandpaper crotch. The clay was tuned to sound out F-A-C-E♭-G#; a sharp 9 chord. The blues tonic, which hangs out in dissonance, inhabiting and making habitable. This sound was live mixed live by Wayne Adams.

Movement III – August 2025
The final movement picks up the pieces returning a malleable body of clay. Not returning as nor returning to but returning as in creating. The pieces hold the scores of Movement I and Movement II. They bear the wrestling holds that imprinted and broke it down; wrestling holds that generated sound. The pieces hold the score. This sound is resonant with the conditions of its emergence. Holds, page turns, breath, thuds, shuffle, dunks, and drips are mixed live together with drummer Nic Crawshaw.