Resilience Training is a voluntary public performance artwork that intends to help us prepare for the seemingly unending series of crises that define our world today. Extreme weather events, pandemics, and cultural traumas do not conform to our demarcation of time; they don’t end abruptly with a change in season. We will inevitably face more hardship in times to come. Resilience is hard to define; we are encouraged to ‘hang in there’, ‘be kind’, ‘look out for one another’, and ‘build resilient communities’. Webb asks, what if resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened and prepared before challenges arise?

The artwork reconsiders the four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude and suggests new values and practices that better support resilience now and in the future: Mercy, Poverty, Humour, and Courage. Each of these virtues is represented by a station in the gardens, which acts as a site for participants to take-up, or change ‘performance’ tasks.

You are free to complete the performance at any station and at any time. Each virtue will prompt different lessons depending on whether the performance is intellectualised or practiced – it is up to each person to decide if and how they will partake, or not.

For Poverty, participants are asked to remove their shoes and socks and walk between two of the stations, in doing this we connect body with earth and become immediately more aware of where our feet fall. For Humour, participants can carry a vessel of water between two stations. The clay vessels used, echo small, cupped hands and have been made in SCAPE’s education programme by students from the following schools Jean Seabrook Memorial School, Heaton Normal Intermediate School, Waltham School, Linwood College, Te Kōmanawa Rowley School, Te Pā o Rākaihautū and Community Group participants from Blind Low Vision NZ. For Courage, participants can carry a rock between two stations. There are many ways to do this that go beyond a test of strength; perhaps asking for assistance in sharing the burden is the best way to grow this particular virtue.

In addition to the participatory element of this work, Webb has collaborated with composer Noel Meek to choreograph and score a procession of the virtues that will occur on Saturdays throughout the SCAPE season. Costumed in black utilitarian overalls, and carrying musical instruments, a small group of performers will navigate the circular route, pausing for musical meditation at each of the four sites. The procession marks the enactment of the fourth virtue, Mercy. For Mercy, selected performers transport a living worm during the procession, caring for this worm as if it were the last worm on earth, and understanding that its life is of equal value to our own.

Acknowledgements: Special thanks to composer Noel Meek, and musicians Hannah Everingham, Jake Kīanō Skinner (Ngāti Rangitihi), Emma Johnston, William McElwee, Heather Webb, and Nicolas Woollaston. Thanks to staff at the Botanic Gardens and David Bolam-Smith at the World Peace Bell Association NZ.

Timetable for performances and participation opportunities:
Every Saturday from 27 November to 18 December 2021. With the exception of the performance on opening weekend 20 November, which will be at 3pm and with no clay vessel making. Meet outside the Robert McDougall Art Gallery.

3 – 3.45pm – Clay vessel making
4 – 4.30pm – Performance