A Static Load Test for Seat and Backrest

HD video of performance 8'00"
Wageningen (2020)

Meeting and complying with European quality, safety and resistance standards.

The static load test is a performance test for chairs, in which the objects repeatedly undergo a set amount of static pressures on the seat and seat- back.

In this segment of the testing cycle, performance is examined by its endurance, in terms of tenacity and exhaust. The static loads are made after the human body, compulsively taking a seat. Ten years of sitting down and standing up is compressed into a two- week trial, to eliminate any interruption or error in the utilization of the product, or to very precisely plan the moment of exhaust.

This work is an inquiry into a simulation industry, an industry most simply explained by its two characteristics: one - the simulation of nature, in storm cabinets and climate rooms, the second made up out of anthropomorphic machines, which resemble the human body but engaged in only one movement forever. 

The film is the result of a first infiltration in the automated production site of things, here I enroll in the durability test myself, sprung from a desire to understand empirically, and to be touched. The image shows the terms of safety we wield, a perversion of time by efficiency, or an animated body mirrored by a ‘real one’, a simple comparison of kinetic properties.

Camera by Anna Laederach