Endurance

(2003)

Working collaboratively with twenty-six youth affected by loss and hardship as a result of life lived on the streets of Seattle, artists Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry created a public performance, oral history archive, and an exhibition of video and photographic portraits called Endurance. 

For the civic performance, each participant stood motionless on a Seattle public sidewalk for an hour, one after another – a significant act of endurance for youth who face health and mental issues and drug addiction. One of the collaborators died before the performance and each participant dedicated their testimony and performance to their friend and others they had lost living on the streets, “standing for ” those individuals who had died.

The resulting 25-hour performance was compressed into a two-hour video highlighting eloquent accounts of the participants’ experiences of drug dependency, difficult childhoods and street crimes. 

Produced and designed by Conjunction Arts with Roy Wilson, Brendan Reed, Mark Luttrell, Studio 62 (Andrei Kalour, Matthew McGuinness and Morgan Sheasby), the Beijing Jinglida Image Picture Technology Group, Jack Straw Productions, and 911 Media Center, in partnership with Peace on the Streets by Kids on the Streets (PSKS) and the Allied Arts Foundation of Seattle. with generous support from The Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, City of Seattle, The National Endowment for the Arts and the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

Endurance was exhibited at Conner Contemporary Gallery (Washington, DC 2003), City Space (Seattle, WA 2004), Marvelli Gallery (New York, NY 2004), Aljira Center for Contemporary Art (Newark, NJ 2005), Tokyo Wonder Site and Nichido Contemporary Art Gallery (Tokyo, Japan 2005).