[Go] back to the body, which is where all the splits in Western Culture occur.

–Carolee Schneemann, Ask the Goddess (1991)

Franko B killed me or An exercise in self-control is a solo live art performance that was created for my MA thesis in European dance-theatre practice and premiered at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance, now Trinity Laban, in London. The work is based on an interest in the problematic duality of body and mind and arises through my own opposing responses to the traumatized body. It exists in the immediacy of the occurrence that arises when my physical and mental selves are permitted to simultaneously recognize their opposing responses to specific visual stimuli–which, in this instance, is a video collage of other live art practices. Through witnessing my displayed response to prerecorded images of bodies in pain, the spectator may become more aware of his own engagement with and response to body art practices while questioning his role in the allowance of the live event happening in his presence.