Part manifesto, part reflection, part artwork, this publication exists as an Image-Text-Performance: a gesture that makes visible a process evolving over many years. It does not position itself as scholarly, nor does it claim new discoveries. It outlines a project, The Gym, as the surfacing tip of a practice that has repeatedly returned since 2008.
This practice originally moved through sporting spaces shaped by conflict, contest, and physical negotiation – boxing rings, football fields, martial arts dojos, and fitness studios – where bodies were trained, tested and shaped through physical practice, as well as wider cultural and political forces. Across public performance events and collaborations training operated both as method and as a way of thinking and making work.
I returned to this line of inquiry in 2024, revisiting an earlier, unrealised project on gyms. The Gym now sits between past and present practices within a contemporary training environment. It functions as a site where previous concerns are brought into relation and reworked – a continuous space of effort and social exchange that generates a performance language grounded in lived experience.
Supported by research at Central Saint Martins UAL and BETTER Gyms and shaped through exchanges with fitness instructors Magdalena Czulak (facilitating access across gym infrastructures), Gage Roberts, Veronica Barnett, and Graciela Rodriguez Perez, the work has been developed in collaboration with Cornelis Joubert (performance), Cheuk Him Lam (LJ) (film), and Nefeli Kentoni (pamphlet design).