Milk + Blood: A performance by artist Franko B toured the UK and Internationally in the of Summer 2016

Internationally recognised as a pioneering performance artist, Franko B used both his body and a punching bag as democratic apparatus in Milk + Blood. Appropriating the sport of boxing for thirteen two-minute rounds of mental and physical grit.

The performance was a fixed image of endurance and struggle embellished in gold. The artist strode and shuffled around his opponent, a milk bleeding punch bag, all while reciting epithetic phrases and mantric incantations, responding to personal traumas, societal ills, corrupt politics and barbaric conflict. The performance became a metaphor for an ephemeral battle against the tribulations of postmodernity.

In this uncompromising performance, Franko B returned to the seminal aesthetics of the wound. Milk will bleed, but blood is still the story.

“Milk + Blood reminds us that the match may be fixed, the result may not be comprehensible in terms of success or failure, but we will bleed. Regardless of ability, strength, stance, and endurance, we will bleed. As Franko B asserts, although we cannot change the fact of our bleeding, we can choose what we bleed for.” Nisha Ramayya, Exeunt Magazine, 10 July 2016.