Everything By My Side (LIFT Festival, Canary Wharf)

Lunchtime in Canary Wharf, and the place is a blur of suits. Identikit men and women – mostly men – whir this way and that, purposive and speedy, their heads in their phones. Glass buildings loom overhead like schoolteachers, so tall they seem thin at the top. Around one, an e-ticker feed purrs round and round, keeping everyone up to speed with the ups and the downs. People drink protein shots and macchiatos.

Lined up down a walkway, a futuristic tunnel, are seven Daz-white beds – each a stage of its own for Fernando Rubio's one-on-one piece. In each, lies an actress – maybe old, maybe young – tucked into the sheets. It's a jarringly incongruous sight, one that catches bustling employees off-guard; a quiet challenge to their routine rush and, at the same time, an offer – to stop, to lie down, to pause, to see things from another angle. It adapts to its surroundings and, when it moves to the South Bank next week, amidst the flurry of tourists, or to Latitude festival, its meaning will shift.

You sit on the bed, shoes off, and climb in, to find yourself lying next to a stranger. It's a curious sensation – a private activity in a very public space; a very indoor space outdoors; an intimate encounter with the world passing by. Rubio's piece is a performance poem of sorts, whispered into your ear as steel-capped heels clacker by. It takes you back to moments of strength and of solace, leaving you to fill the gaps with your own life, then charges you to take hold of things.

The tone is maternal – kindly and soothing – and there's something lovely about its use of touch: a light hand on your shoulder, fingers tracing your cheeks. It's a piece that presses reset, puts you back in touch with yourself and with your surroundings. Walking away, you feel oddly aware of the surface of your skin – so rare in this impersonal city, driven by data and ideas.

True, there's something of the shopping mall massage about the experience; that sense of a momentary realignment before you get back out there – but that's no bad thing in itself. At a mere quarter of an hour, it's too short by half; too slight to fully pull you out of the rush and into another headspace altogether. Even so, Rubio's text lingers around, the words curling into your subconscious so that, for a while afterwards, you slow down and situate yourself in your surroundings: everything by your side.

Everything by my Side (Argentina) runs in Canary Wharf until 3 June, then at the Southbank Centre from 4 to 6 June.