Setting the stage...

At its center is a regulation arm wrestling table encircled by wrestling-style ropes, transforming it into a hybrid of ring, stage, and sculptural object. The production leans deliberately theatrical: dramatic spotlights, entrance music signals each match, and a campy announcer narrates the stakes with exaggerated bravado. A formally positioned referee oversees each match, reinforcing the ritualized structure of the contest.

Participants are open to all genders, bodies, and skill levels, entering into a brief, consensual encounter of physical tension. Each match becomes a choreographed moment of eye contact, breath, strain, humor, resistance, and release. The clasped hands form a temporary living sculpture, holding a charged negotiation between dominance and surrender.

Arm wrestling carries strong associations with masculinity and aggression. By recontextualizing it in an art space, and inviting queer, femme, and unexpected bodies to occupy this role, the work unsettles assumptions about who performs strength and how it is read. The tournament format provides structure, while the intimacy of the gesture complicates the binary of winner and loser.

The audience forms a circular perimeter around the table, heightening collective witnessing. A projected bracket tracks each encounter, creating a visual diagram of relational tension as the event unfolds. Between matches, brief pauses emphasize anticipation as part of the choreography.

DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?

Lilly Dyer...

As a queer artist working through play, I am interested in how competitive structures can be reframed as sites of closeness rather than domination. HOLD ME CLOSER asks: What does power look like when it is consensual and ritualized? How do we perform strength in front of others? Can confrontation become a form of intimacy?

Documentation will include video of each match, close-up photography of clasped hands, and the completed tournament bracket, which will remain as an archival installation after the live event, extending the performance into a sculptural trace.

HOLD ME CLOSER exists at the intersection of performance, social practice, and play. It invites risk, humor, discomfort, and collective investment; transforming a dive bar spectacle into a study of embodied encounters.

EVENTS
Arm-Wrestling Tournament: Saturday, OCT 3 from 12 – 5PM
-Sign up from 12-1PM; RSVP in advance HERE
-Competition from 1-4PM

Opening Reception: Friday, OCT 9th from 5-8PM
View the documentation of HOLD ME CLOSER

Open Hours: Saturday, OCT 10th from 11-4PM
View the documentation of HOLD ME CLOSER