Mucus Factory (2011)
Duration: variable length
Commissioned by Live Art Development Agency as part of Restock Reflect Rethink 2: Live Art and Disability (London). Performed at: Access All Areas: Live Art and Disability (London), Chelsea Theatre (London), ]performance s p a c e[ (London), Kapelica Gallery (Ljubljana), Sick Festival at The Basement (Brighton), Spill Festival of Performance (London), Experimentica at Chapter Arts Centre (Cardiff), Abrons Art Center (New York). Additional performer: Becky Beyts.
Mucus Factory was a durational performance which appropriated medical practices and placed them in the gallery space. I performed physiotherapy, a treatment for cystic fibrosis which loosens mucus on the lungs, over long durations. In a repetitive cycle, I used the mucus, which I had collected, as hair gel; as adhesive to stick glitter to my body and as lubrication to insert the mouth piece of a nebuliser up my ass.
Thank you Ma’am, Please May I have Another? (2011)
Duration: 15 Minutes
Performed at Live Art Development Agency’s Access All Areas: Live Art and Disability (London). Created in collaboration with Sheree Rose
This was the first collaboration between me and Sheree Rose. It was based on Sheree’s 1989 video collaboration with Bob Flanagan and Mike Kelley, 100 Reasons. The performance was fifteen minutes long and consisted of Sheree spanking me 100 times. After each strike, I would call out the number and say ‘thank you ma’am, please may I have another?’. The performance ended with an embrace between the two of us. It was my way of honouring the important work Bob and Sheree has made during the 1980’s and 90’s. At the time neither of us knew it would be the start of a collaboration that is still going on.
Regimes of Hardship #1-3 (2012)
Duration: 12 Hours
Performed at ]performance s p a c e[ (London) during a residency. #3 in collaboration with Sheree Rose. #1 & #2 installation designed by David MacDiarmid.
Regimes of Hardship was a trilogy of performances shown during a three month period (one each month). Images and materials were developed from one work to the next. #1 took place in a canal of green gunge through which I moved in order to reach four areas, where the actions took place. These included pounding my chest whilst wearing a boxing glove, wrapping my body in barbed wire, and breathing into a medical mask. In #2, I moved over and under a platform in a sequence which included covering my chest in glitter, suspending myself from the ceiling using a harness, and washing in a bath of green gunge. #3 was made in collaboration with Sheree Rose. It was framed by a contract stating that I would submit to her for the duration of the work. The actions included turning me into a food sculpture, keeping me in bondage, and ended with cake being served off my body.
Breathe for Me (2012)
Duration: 3 Hours
First performed at Grace Exhibition Space (New York) during a residency with ]performance s p a c e[. Supported by the British Council and Arts Council England. Performed at In Between Time Festival of Contemporary Performance (Bristol), Dansehallerne (Copenhagen), The Wellcome Collection (London), Performatorium Festival of Queer Performance (Regina), Warwick Arts Centre (Coventry).
Breathe for Me considers the nature of the regulated chronically ill body. It began with me cutting the shape of lungs onto my chest and performing physiotherapy in order to cough mucus into thirty specimen jars which adorn the edges of the catwalk. This was followed by a number of actions moving up and down a catwalk: wearing a re-breathe hood (BDSM mask for breath restriction), crawling with thirty needles pierced into my stomach, plunging my head into a vat of green gunge. It ended with me sat at one end of the catwalk, exhausted and stained green from the gunge, breathing heavily into a medical breathing mask.
The Baby (2013)
Duration: 30 Minutes
Commissioned by Live Art Development Agency and Queen Mary University of London for Peopling the Palace Festival, The People’s Palace (London). Created in collaboration with Sheree Rose.
The context for this performance was a festival which addressed ideas of age and intergenerational collaboration. Sheree and I created a performance for the main stage of the grand People’s Palace. It was inspired by Bob Flanagan’s poem The Baby in which he thinks through what it might feel like to birth a sick baby. The performance positioned me as Sheree’s baby and began with us connected by an umbilical cord from her labia piercing to my naval piercing. The actions which followed were tender yet harsh: bathing which turned into water boarding, disciplining which turned into flogging. It ended with a pieta-like-image. Sheree sat me on her lap and I suckled at her breast whilst Ave Maria played.
Do With Me as You Will/Make Martin Suffer for Art (2013)
Duration: 24 hours
Performed at LAX Sanctuary Dungeon (Los Angeles). Created in collaboration with Sheree Rose.
Do With Me as You Will/Make Martin Suffer for Art was a durational performance in a professional BDSM dungeon in LA. I was kept in a cage in the centre of the room. This was the same cage Sheree used to keep Bob in. The audience were invited to come into the dungeon and suggest to Sheree what she should do to me or what they themselves would like to do. The nature of the interactions varied from BDSM scenes to conversations or sharing food. Every hour, Sheree made a small cut on my arm to mark the time and we recorded a video diary. Activities included being beaten and interrogated by Durk Dehner, having a piece of ginger inserted into my ass, the butterfly board in which the scrotum is stretched and pinned to a cork board. People were given up to one hour to use me and to ‘make Martin suffer for art’.
Last(ing) (2013)
Duration: 45 Minutes
Performed at Spill Festival of Performance (London). Additional performer: David MacDiarmid.
Last(ing) was my first experiment with a non-durational mode of performance. It took the myth of Cronus as its starting point. Cronus was the Greek god of time and his name is where the word chronic (as in chronic illness) comes from. The performance began with David gilding my chest in gold and consisted of a series of focused actions on my body. All of the pieces of equipment I used were hanging from the ceiling and I used a trampoline to reach them. The actions included filling a tank of green gunge from buckets whilst wearing a re-breathe hood (BDSM breath restriction mask), being given an enema and tipping the contents over my head, bathing in green gunge, and being wrapped in barbed wire.
Dust to Dust (2015)
Duration: 1 Hour
Commissioned by and performed at ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives (Los Angeles). Additional funding from the British Council and Arts Council England through the international development fund. Made in collaboration with Sheree Rose. Live sound by Rain Lucien Matheke. Additional Performers: Toro Castaño, Sam Emery, Rafa Esparza, Michael MP Griffin, Grace Marie, Dulce Stein, and Albert Vitela.
Dust to Dust was originally conceived by Sheree Rose and Bob Flanagan in 1994 as the second part of The Death Trilogy. The first, Video Coffin, was made but Flanagan died before the others could be completed. I worked with Sheree, using their archive at ONE to realise the second part. In our version, we were painted white before processing the audience to a room containing thousands of tiny photographs from the archive, which they were able to throw into a coffin holding an effigy of Bob. The procession then carried the coffin outside where it was placed in a grave and burned.
Taste of Flesh/Bite Me I’m Yours (2015)
Duration: 3 Hours
Commissioned by Arts Catalyst as part of Trust Me I’m an Artist, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Performed at The White Building (London).
In this piece, I took the figure of the zombie as a starting point for the first time. I was chained to a pole in the centre of a room, made from semi-transparent plastic, built inside a gallery. As I moved one way around the pole, the chain tightened around it. When I moved in the opposite direction, it loosened. At full length, the chain allowed me to reach all four walls. The actions all involved spiralling in and out from the pole, demanding audience members move to avoid tripping over the chain or making physical contact with me. These actions included painting a green spiral on the floor, using my head; biting audience members as I passed them; and squeezing green water balloons filled with green paint until they burst.
It’s Good to Breathe In… (2015-2017)
Duration: variable length
Performed at Dartington Hall Estate (Totnes), Glue Factory (Glasgow), Venice Week of Performance Art (Venice), Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club (London), Dublin Festival of Live Art (Dublin).
This was a series of works that responded to the specific locations in relation to my sick body. Each version was different but the same materials were used: bath tub full of green coloured water, urine, blood, mucus, re-breathe hood (BDSM breath restriction mask), painful medical equipment such as needles and scalpel. I decided on a specific time frame for each piece. Each version was an improvised performance with the materials. In every work, I explored my own condition in order to develop actions which considered survival and the fight for breath. The actions included cutting the shape of lungs on my chest, prolonged periods of gargling and spitting green water, covering my chest in cotton wool, collecting mucus and using it as hair gel.
If It Were The Apocalypse I’d Eat You To Stay Alive (2015-2017)
Duration: 1 hour.
Funded by Arts Council England Grants for the Arts. Created as part of Artsadmin Bursary Artist, with financial support from Jerwood Charitable Foundation. Performed at Toynbee Studios (London), DARC Studio (London), Live Art Bistro (Leeds), In Between Time Festival of Contemporary performance (Bristol), Montreal Arts Interculturels (Montreal). Live sound by Suhail Ilyas. Additional performers: Chloe O’Brien, Zack McGuinness, Sheree Rose, Dominic Johnson, Michael Toppings.
In this performance I developed my interest in the figure of the zombie and the playful idea of an apocalyptic scenario in which sickness becomes a desired state of being. It began with me as a breathing corpse, either mummified or under a white sheet. This was followed by a series of actions inspired by the zombie and ideas of contagion.
The Viewing (2016)
Duration: 24 Hours
Commissioned by DadaFest. Created in collaboration with Sheree Rose with assistance from Rhiannon Aarons, sound design by Luka Fisher, and video art by Peter Kalisch.
The Viewing was the final part of the Death Trilogy, originally conceived by Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose. It was designed as a posthumous piece in which Bob would be buried with a camera in the coffin and people would be able to turn a television on, in a gallery, to watch him decompose. Our re-imagining of it was as a 24 hour performance. I lay in a coffin, the spectators could only watch via CCTV. In the audience space, there were four large printed photographs of Bob’s corpse. The large projection screen was split into four, offering different views of my body in the coffin. Every hour, for fifteen minutes, Sheree and Rhiannon entered and performed various tortures on my body such as cutting, whipping, dressing me as a zombie, and stapling.
The Unwell (2016)
Duration: 30 Minutes
Commissioned by Art Space Coventry as part of the City Arcadia Project. Created in collaboration with Suhail Ilyas,
The Unwell was my first film project. It continued my work on the figure of the zombie as a metaphor for illness. It is a playful imagining of an apocalyptic landscape inhabited only by staggering, coughing bodies. I perform as all of the sixteen different zombies in the film, which was shot by Suhail. Human life has changed and only the unwell remain. The world in the film looks dystopic but I see it as a strange, tongue in cheek utopia. It offers a view of illness as the development of human kind. It is the clearest representation I have done of an apocalyptic world in which only the sick can survive.
Sanctuary Ring (2016)
Duration: 3 Hours
Commissioned by Spill Festival of Performance (Ipswich). Made in collaboration with Sheree Rose. Live sound by Suhail Ilyas. Additional performers: Amy Kingsmill, Chloe O’Brien, Zack McGuinness, Joseph Morgan Schofield, Giovanna Maria Casetta, Eirini Kartsaki.
A sanctuary ring is a metal knocker on the door of a church. Until the 17th century fugitives could hold the ring and claim asylum for 40 days from the law. In this durational site specific performance at St Clement’s Church, we created our own sanctuary of sickness. Over the duration of the piece, we travelled slowly down the aisle, with a host of acolytes following us. We stopped at various stations at which Sheree would perform an action on/with my body. These ranged from shaving my hair, piercing my nipples, flogging me, fucking me up the ass with a strap on in a bath tub of water. The performance ended in a re-enactment of an action Bob and Sheree performed for the Godflesh Crush my Soul music video. I was suspended by my ankles whilst the music video was silently projected. When I reached the top, a recording of Bob reading his poem Why? played.
The Ascension (2018)
Duration: 2 Hours
Performed at Jason Vass Gallery, LA. Made in collaboration with Sheree Rose.
This work was the second St Bob Flanagan S/M Chapel work. It was performed for the closing of the exhibition 'Every Breath You Take', in which artists responded to the late Bob Flanagan. This ritual performance took the form of a mass and borrowed from various religious ceremonies. I was moved through various actions. It began with me crawling through the gallery, following a flower boy, who threw small pictures on Bob on the ground. I was being whipped by nuns as I crawled. The ceremony included readings and a bathing. It concluded with me being suspended, using hooks through my skin on my back and arms. I was brought down towards the ground, only for Sheree to wrap her arms around me, and for the two of us to be taken back up in the air. The final image, as we landed, was a pieta-like tableaux.
Until the Last Breath is Breathed (2018-2020)
Duration: 30 Hours
Performed or shown at Tate Britain, DaDaFest, Colchester Arts Centre. Made in collaboration with Suhail Merchant.
This work was the culmination of my practice up until this point. I performed 30 actions to camera during the 30 hours leading up to my 30th birthday, my life expectancy. This was all performed in an abandoned morgue. The video was then used to create two works, under the same title. The first in a video installation, using three screens and an edited version of the 30 actions to camera. The second is a performance lecture. This uses select actions from the video alongside a series of live actions and texts. The texts are prophecy, foretelling a world where the sick rise to prominence. This lecture also introduces my concept of Zombie Time, which you can read more about in my upcoming writing.
Duration: variable length
Commissioned by Live Art Development Agency as part of Restock Reflect Rethink 2: Live Art and Disability (London). Performed at: Access All Areas: Live Art and Disability (London), Chelsea Theatre (London), ]performance s p a c e[ (London), Kapelica Gallery (Ljubljana), Sick Festival at The Basement (Brighton), Spill Festival of Performance (London), Experimentica at Chapter Arts Centre (Cardiff), Abrons Art Center (New York). Additional performer: Becky Beyts.
Mucus Factory was a durational performance which appropriated medical practices and placed them in the gallery space. I performed physiotherapy, a treatment for cystic fibrosis which loosens mucus on the lungs, over long durations. In a repetitive cycle, I used the mucus, which I had collected, as hair gel; as adhesive to stick glitter to my body and as lubrication to insert the mouth piece of a nebuliser up my ass.
Thank you Ma’am, Please May I have Another? (2011)
Duration: 15 Minutes
Performed at Live Art Development Agency’s Access All Areas: Live Art and Disability (London). Created in collaboration with Sheree Rose
This was the first collaboration between me and Sheree Rose. It was based on Sheree’s 1989 video collaboration with Bob Flanagan and Mike Kelley, 100 Reasons. The performance was fifteen minutes long and consisted of Sheree spanking me 100 times. After each strike, I would call out the number and say ‘thank you ma’am, please may I have another?’. The performance ended with an embrace between the two of us. It was my way of honouring the important work Bob and Sheree has made during the 1980’s and 90’s. At the time neither of us knew it would be the start of a collaboration that is still going on.
Regimes of Hardship #1-3 (2012)
Duration: 12 Hours
Performed at ]performance s p a c e[ (London) during a residency. #3 in collaboration with Sheree Rose. #1 & #2 installation designed by David MacDiarmid.
Regimes of Hardship was a trilogy of performances shown during a three month period (one each month). Images and materials were developed from one work to the next. #1 took place in a canal of green gunge through which I moved in order to reach four areas, where the actions took place. These included pounding my chest whilst wearing a boxing glove, wrapping my body in barbed wire, and breathing into a medical mask. In #2, I moved over and under a platform in a sequence which included covering my chest in glitter, suspending myself from the ceiling using a harness, and washing in a bath of green gunge. #3 was made in collaboration with Sheree Rose. It was framed by a contract stating that I would submit to her for the duration of the work. The actions included turning me into a food sculpture, keeping me in bondage, and ended with cake being served off my body.
Breathe for Me (2012)
Duration: 3 Hours
First performed at Grace Exhibition Space (New York) during a residency with ]performance s p a c e[. Supported by the British Council and Arts Council England. Performed at In Between Time Festival of Contemporary Performance (Bristol), Dansehallerne (Copenhagen), The Wellcome Collection (London), Performatorium Festival of Queer Performance (Regina), Warwick Arts Centre (Coventry).
Breathe for Me considers the nature of the regulated chronically ill body. It began with me cutting the shape of lungs onto my chest and performing physiotherapy in order to cough mucus into thirty specimen jars which adorn the edges of the catwalk. This was followed by a number of actions moving up and down a catwalk: wearing a re-breathe hood (BDSM mask for breath restriction), crawling with thirty needles pierced into my stomach, plunging my head into a vat of green gunge. It ended with me sat at one end of the catwalk, exhausted and stained green from the gunge, breathing heavily into a medical breathing mask.
The Baby (2013)
Duration: 30 Minutes
Commissioned by Live Art Development Agency and Queen Mary University of London for Peopling the Palace Festival, The People’s Palace (London). Created in collaboration with Sheree Rose.
The context for this performance was a festival which addressed ideas of age and intergenerational collaboration. Sheree and I created a performance for the main stage of the grand People’s Palace. It was inspired by Bob Flanagan’s poem The Baby in which he thinks through what it might feel like to birth a sick baby. The performance positioned me as Sheree’s baby and began with us connected by an umbilical cord from her labia piercing to my naval piercing. The actions which followed were tender yet harsh: bathing which turned into water boarding, disciplining which turned into flogging. It ended with a pieta-like-image. Sheree sat me on her lap and I suckled at her breast whilst Ave Maria played.
Do With Me as You Will/Make Martin Suffer for Art (2013)
Duration: 24 hours
Performed at LAX Sanctuary Dungeon (Los Angeles). Created in collaboration with Sheree Rose.
Do With Me as You Will/Make Martin Suffer for Art was a durational performance in a professional BDSM dungeon in LA. I was kept in a cage in the centre of the room. This was the same cage Sheree used to keep Bob in. The audience were invited to come into the dungeon and suggest to Sheree what she should do to me or what they themselves would like to do. The nature of the interactions varied from BDSM scenes to conversations or sharing food. Every hour, Sheree made a small cut on my arm to mark the time and we recorded a video diary. Activities included being beaten and interrogated by Durk Dehner, having a piece of ginger inserted into my ass, the butterfly board in which the scrotum is stretched and pinned to a cork board. People were given up to one hour to use me and to ‘make Martin suffer for art’.
Last(ing) (2013)
Duration: 45 Minutes
Performed at Spill Festival of Performance (London). Additional performer: David MacDiarmid.
Last(ing) was my first experiment with a non-durational mode of performance. It took the myth of Cronus as its starting point. Cronus was the Greek god of time and his name is where the word chronic (as in chronic illness) comes from. The performance began with David gilding my chest in gold and consisted of a series of focused actions on my body. All of the pieces of equipment I used were hanging from the ceiling and I used a trampoline to reach them. The actions included filling a tank of green gunge from buckets whilst wearing a re-breathe hood (BDSM breath restriction mask), being given an enema and tipping the contents over my head, bathing in green gunge, and being wrapped in barbed wire.
Dust to Dust (2015)
Duration: 1 Hour
Commissioned by and performed at ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives (Los Angeles). Additional funding from the British Council and Arts Council England through the international development fund. Made in collaboration with Sheree Rose. Live sound by Rain Lucien Matheke. Additional Performers: Toro Castaño, Sam Emery, Rafa Esparza, Michael MP Griffin, Grace Marie, Dulce Stein, and Albert Vitela.
Dust to Dust was originally conceived by Sheree Rose and Bob Flanagan in 1994 as the second part of The Death Trilogy. The first, Video Coffin, was made but Flanagan died before the others could be completed. I worked with Sheree, using their archive at ONE to realise the second part. In our version, we were painted white before processing the audience to a room containing thousands of tiny photographs from the archive, which they were able to throw into a coffin holding an effigy of Bob. The procession then carried the coffin outside where it was placed in a grave and burned.
Taste of Flesh/Bite Me I’m Yours (2015)
Duration: 3 Hours
Commissioned by Arts Catalyst as part of Trust Me I’m an Artist, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Performed at The White Building (London).
In this piece, I took the figure of the zombie as a starting point for the first time. I was chained to a pole in the centre of a room, made from semi-transparent plastic, built inside a gallery. As I moved one way around the pole, the chain tightened around it. When I moved in the opposite direction, it loosened. At full length, the chain allowed me to reach all four walls. The actions all involved spiralling in and out from the pole, demanding audience members move to avoid tripping over the chain or making physical contact with me. These actions included painting a green spiral on the floor, using my head; biting audience members as I passed them; and squeezing green water balloons filled with green paint until they burst.
It’s Good to Breathe In… (2015-2017)
Duration: variable length
Performed at Dartington Hall Estate (Totnes), Glue Factory (Glasgow), Venice Week of Performance Art (Venice), Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club (London), Dublin Festival of Live Art (Dublin).
This was a series of works that responded to the specific locations in relation to my sick body. Each version was different but the same materials were used: bath tub full of green coloured water, urine, blood, mucus, re-breathe hood (BDSM breath restriction mask), painful medical equipment such as needles and scalpel. I decided on a specific time frame for each piece. Each version was an improvised performance with the materials. In every work, I explored my own condition in order to develop actions which considered survival and the fight for breath. The actions included cutting the shape of lungs on my chest, prolonged periods of gargling and spitting green water, covering my chest in cotton wool, collecting mucus and using it as hair gel.
If It Were The Apocalypse I’d Eat You To Stay Alive (2015-2017)
Duration: 1 hour.
Funded by Arts Council England Grants for the Arts. Created as part of Artsadmin Bursary Artist, with financial support from Jerwood Charitable Foundation. Performed at Toynbee Studios (London), DARC Studio (London), Live Art Bistro (Leeds), In Between Time Festival of Contemporary performance (Bristol), Montreal Arts Interculturels (Montreal). Live sound by Suhail Ilyas. Additional performers: Chloe O’Brien, Zack McGuinness, Sheree Rose, Dominic Johnson, Michael Toppings.
In this performance I developed my interest in the figure of the zombie and the playful idea of an apocalyptic scenario in which sickness becomes a desired state of being. It began with me as a breathing corpse, either mummified or under a white sheet. This was followed by a series of actions inspired by the zombie and ideas of contagion.
The Viewing (2016)
Duration: 24 Hours
Commissioned by DadaFest. Created in collaboration with Sheree Rose with assistance from Rhiannon Aarons, sound design by Luka Fisher, and video art by Peter Kalisch.
The Viewing was the final part of the Death Trilogy, originally conceived by Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose. It was designed as a posthumous piece in which Bob would be buried with a camera in the coffin and people would be able to turn a television on, in a gallery, to watch him decompose. Our re-imagining of it was as a 24 hour performance. I lay in a coffin, the spectators could only watch via CCTV. In the audience space, there were four large printed photographs of Bob’s corpse. The large projection screen was split into four, offering different views of my body in the coffin. Every hour, for fifteen minutes, Sheree and Rhiannon entered and performed various tortures on my body such as cutting, whipping, dressing me as a zombie, and stapling.
The Unwell (2016)
Duration: 30 Minutes
Commissioned by Art Space Coventry as part of the City Arcadia Project. Created in collaboration with Suhail Ilyas,
The Unwell was my first film project. It continued my work on the figure of the zombie as a metaphor for illness. It is a playful imagining of an apocalyptic landscape inhabited only by staggering, coughing bodies. I perform as all of the sixteen different zombies in the film, which was shot by Suhail. Human life has changed and only the unwell remain. The world in the film looks dystopic but I see it as a strange, tongue in cheek utopia. It offers a view of illness as the development of human kind. It is the clearest representation I have done of an apocalyptic world in which only the sick can survive.
Sanctuary Ring (2016)
Duration: 3 Hours
Commissioned by Spill Festival of Performance (Ipswich). Made in collaboration with Sheree Rose. Live sound by Suhail Ilyas. Additional performers: Amy Kingsmill, Chloe O’Brien, Zack McGuinness, Joseph Morgan Schofield, Giovanna Maria Casetta, Eirini Kartsaki.
A sanctuary ring is a metal knocker on the door of a church. Until the 17th century fugitives could hold the ring and claim asylum for 40 days from the law. In this durational site specific performance at St Clement’s Church, we created our own sanctuary of sickness. Over the duration of the piece, we travelled slowly down the aisle, with a host of acolytes following us. We stopped at various stations at which Sheree would perform an action on/with my body. These ranged from shaving my hair, piercing my nipples, flogging me, fucking me up the ass with a strap on in a bath tub of water. The performance ended in a re-enactment of an action Bob and Sheree performed for the Godflesh Crush my Soul music video. I was suspended by my ankles whilst the music video was silently projected. When I reached the top, a recording of Bob reading his poem Why? played.
The Ascension (2018)
Duration: 2 Hours
Performed at Jason Vass Gallery, LA. Made in collaboration with Sheree Rose.
This work was the second St Bob Flanagan S/M Chapel work. It was performed for the closing of the exhibition 'Every Breath You Take', in which artists responded to the late Bob Flanagan. This ritual performance took the form of a mass and borrowed from various religious ceremonies. I was moved through various actions. It began with me crawling through the gallery, following a flower boy, who threw small pictures on Bob on the ground. I was being whipped by nuns as I crawled. The ceremony included readings and a bathing. It concluded with me being suspended, using hooks through my skin on my back and arms. I was brought down towards the ground, only for Sheree to wrap her arms around me, and for the two of us to be taken back up in the air. The final image, as we landed, was a pieta-like tableaux.
Until the Last Breath is Breathed (2018-2020)
Duration: 30 Hours
Performed or shown at Tate Britain, DaDaFest, Colchester Arts Centre. Made in collaboration with Suhail Merchant.
This work was the culmination of my practice up until this point. I performed 30 actions to camera during the 30 hours leading up to my 30th birthday, my life expectancy. This was all performed in an abandoned morgue. The video was then used to create two works, under the same title. The first in a video installation, using three screens and an edited version of the 30 actions to camera. The second is a performance lecture. This uses select actions from the video alongside a series of live actions and texts. The texts are prophecy, foretelling a world where the sick rise to prominence. This lecture also introduces my concept of Zombie Time, which you can read more about in my upcoming writing.