Always/Beautiful

Manor House’s Always / Beautiful (2019) is an unruly proposition. An enormous, rectangular climbing net hung in an otherwise unadorned space: this simple scenography generates and frames a complex unfolding, as the two artists navigate a shifting set of tasks, forms, moods, and geometries. How to remain grounded in such unpredictable, hyper-mobile terrain? Always / Beautiful inverts the tropes of today’s contemporary circus, provocatively imagining circus virtuosity as a training in sensitivity and circus spectatorship as an active work of empathy. Both challenging and uplifting, this piece poses the question: what might it take to rebuild networks of care for the contemporary? And how can we coordinate the imperative of care with a political stance that refuses to apologise for attending to pleasure?