7 HOURS OF CARE

7 Hours of Care

Long-Durational Performance

November 22, 2022
12:00 PM – 7:00 PM (EST)
Live-streamed performance

A Sammi Price Voice Production
Technical Director: Eliane Delage
Special Thanks: Delaney Palma, Alex Scelso

🎥 Watch the full performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dbXUc4mBxQ

Audience members were invited to join the performance at any point, for as little or as long as they wished.

About the Work

7 Hours of Care is a long-durational performance exploring choice, habit, caretaking, and the moment when conscious action quietly becomes nonconsensual routine.

While the number seven is not a fixed constraint of the piece, it symbolizes the release and forgiveness of a seven-year period in the artist’s life that inspired the work. The performance compresses years of repeated action into a single, uninterrupted span of time, inviting viewers to consider how small, daily choices accumulate — and how awareness can restore agency.

This written reflection examines the symbolism, structure, and personal discoveries that emerged through the performance. Additional reflections were added following the work, and audience members were invited to share their own experiences directly with the artist.

Visual Description

The performer, referred to as The Waterer, enters the filmed space from an unknown origin. Two live-streamed cameras capture a potted rose, the performer, and a pool of water within the room.

The Waterer fills a vessel, walks to the rose, grasps its thorns, and waters it.

This sequence — filling, walking, holding, watering — is repeated continuously for seven hours without pause.

Artist Statement

“It would be easy to approach this work from a place of safety. I have come to understand that creating art requires placing oneself in a space of fear — because change is never comfortable.”

7 Hours of Care emerged from a moment in which I realized I had lost awareness of choice in my own life. It felt as though I were standing at the edge of a pond, watching an inner version of myself struggle to stay afloat. I saw myself at five years old, at thirteen, in moments of despair and moments of joy — all existing at once.

Awareness of choice became the act of rescue. Through recognizing repeated actions, I regained agency over them.

This piece is about choice — and what happens when choice is left unattended long enough to transform into habit without consent.

The Waterer (The Caretaker)

The Waterer represents the role of the caretaker — an individual consumed by the act of continual nurture. Over the course of seven uninterrupted hours, the performance isolates a fragment of time that mirrors the days, years, and decades in which humans dedicate habitual action to caretaking.

The work asks the viewer to consider the following questions without judgment:

• What is a repeated choice you make every day?

• Is this choice made from free will — or from guilt, pressure, or fear?

• Does the recipient of this care nurture you in return?

• What are you watering in your life — a person, a thought pattern, a substance, yourself?

• At what point does repeated choice stop being choice at all?

The Waterer continues despite exhaustion. The repetition becomes visible. The cost becomes unavoidable.

The Rose (The Receiver)

The rose symbolizes the recipient of care — another person, a relationship, a belief, a substance, or the self.

Initially, the rose benefits from the act of watering. However, through repetition without balance or reciprocity, it begins to drown. What originated from care ultimately causes harm.

The rose did not ask for this role. It suffers alongside the Waterer.

The work asks us to consider how acts of care — when stripped of awareness — can damage both the giver and the receiver.

Reflection

7 Hours of Care invites viewers to observe their lives without judgment. To notice where time and energy are given. To recognize the thin line between choice and habit.

Not all habits are harmful. Some bring joy, alignment, and mutual nourishment. Others begin gently, even lovingly, before quietly eroding the self.

Awareness is the turning point.

By compressing years of action into a single repeated motion, the performance strips away distraction and reveals the root behavior beneath complexity. What we water grows — or drowns.

📩 Contact
sammi@sammiprice.com
www.sammiprice.com/performanceart