A series of adaptations were required to complete this collaboration, one taking place on the first night of the London Bookfair, for an event I was hosting & curating, with Amanda de la Garza. In the end, the evening was genuinely beautiful, easy to put together, and the performance between a video Amanda & I was really resonant (to me, I wouldn't presume further than that.)

The British Council have been a great partner on this event, providing lots of support and the presence of the brilliant Carmen Buellosa, and I had some time at the bohemyth bookfair in the day before the evening, where I reconnected with lots of friends I met on my two visits to perform in Mexico. It was during that afternoon, strolling in the Olympia, that I received Amanda's video, and then, with crippling audio problems, at great speed, I rushed home and we hashed out a deliberately unsynched audio reading track which had pauses for me to read in, around her words, and then I came up with some actions, reflecting her own performance in the video, when the audience could see her extraordinary visage, looming large. I bit pages from the Enemigos anthology and crawled on the stage. The final result was gentle, unsettled and singular, I think. I was very pleased.

Held on April 14th 2015 at the Rich Mix in London, a host of Mexican poets and writers on the first night of the London Bookfair collaborated with their British counterparts in an original evening of literature, read and discussed as part of the groundbreaking Enemies project.

The evening gave life once again into what has been one of the most exciting Enemies projects, and to see Rocio Ceron, Holly Pester, Adriana Enciso, Fabian Peake, Nell Leyshon, all shine so cohesively, with such clear relationships emanating from the collaborations was satisfying. I can vaguely relax for the rest of the bookfair now, cold selling my cupcakes to the massive trade delegations who also feed on books.

You can see all the Enemigos videos here : www.theenemiesproject.com/enemigos

If I'm doing what might be seen as art performance, and I'm happy for it to be seen as that, then it needs to be something that I feel is authentic to me. I need to feel an absolute internal assurance that the work is genuine, whatever that means. It might have heavy conceptual ideas behind it, but it can't be founded on them. Otherwise I feel I risk pretentiousness in a way I am not comfortable with, and this because I always feel a sense of exposure and a combative relationship to audiences. This performance, 666 blows one break, is another that calls out my martial arts background, looking to transpose a life practice into a new context in order to make it performative. The piece is supposed to be about a faux vedic ritualism, guttural voice, masculinity turning into emasculinity because of exhaustion and the dance like movement of muay thai pad repetition. All things wither, lose their lustre and decay in one form of another. Hopefully what begins here as shiny, blood covered, pad booming manliness devolves into emptied, failing, exhausted humanity.

I enjoyed the experience very much, though so much of it was actualised very late in the day and we had to stay simple to make it work. I owe a huge debt to those I collaborated with on the piece. Chris Page, who trained with me for quite awhile and is a great musician and old friend, was amazing holding the pads, bringing back my mcguffin dragon mask and generally taking the power with aplomb. David Kelly, my best friend and oft collaborator, who created the fundament of the piece with his buddha box soundscape. Robert Hitzeman, who is rapidly becoming someone close to me who I admire very much as an artist and a person, who curated the show along with Mohammad Namazi and Emily Purser

Moreover, those in attendance were uniformly warm and qualified with their opinions, offering many different interpretations of the piece but all sensing that the work was just a process of transference from the practise of my life into the practise of my artwork, if it is that at all. The work featured in the show was also of a fine quality, a real interesting mix, and the space, at the very end of Kilburn Lane, quite close to my west london homestead, was a unique slightly emptied old leisure centre turned artspace. I was able to walk there and back, enjoying a night in the city with my pads and warpaintbloodbag and little incense elephant. Check out http://www.openworkproject.com/ this is the first of a proposed series of shows.