Melissa Wyman

Fight Therapy: a Discussion About Agency, Art and the Reverse Triangle Choke Melissa Wyman

Fight Therapy is an experience that is simultaneously aggressive, strikingly symbiotic and awkwardly frictional: a form of collaboration that could otherwise be described as human connectivity. Relationship building depends on the flow of both verbal and nonverbal communication between ?grappling partners??with many cultural subtleties lost and discovered in transition ? and translation. Even those trained in diplomatic exchanges find themselves in clumsy situations that can variably lead to laughter, embarrassment, or anger. Interweaving the personal with the global, ?international relations?, like wrestling, are simultaneously beautiful, awkward, and exploratory. Drawing from exhilarating and sometimes compromising experiences practicing close-contact martial arts and working in various countries over a period of ten years, Fight Therapy is more than an essay, it is a socially based art project that investigates humor and aggressions involved in interpersonal and cross-cultural (mis)communications.