push the floor is a video performance that engages tension, gravity, friction, and geologic time. The choreography emerges from experimenting with pushing the floor. I originally performed the piece live before an audience on October 30, 2023 at Northern-Southern Gallery in Austin, Texas, celebrating the gallery’s 10 year anniversary. I invited the audience to engage with and contribute sound to the performance by constantly rubbing their hands together, applying pressure and friction to the point of discomfort. I used smooth ocean stones as a prop and invited participation as a way of implicating the audience in the physical experience of pushing the floor. In the controlled and consistent pacing of repetitious and effortful movement, I expand time and prompt the viewer’s awareness of their own somatic experience.