This performance took place during the premiere of 2426F, a brutal little torture film I made with Bedside Productions. We staged it on the original filming site - an empty, echoing space - and turned it into something new. A live altar of pain, spectacle, and transformation. Not a reenactment, but a continuation.

I entered already marked. My wrists had been pierced with suspension hooks, pulled wide and rigged overhead. A steel collar locked around my throat, bolting me to the spot. As I knelt, my face was slowly adorned with facial needles – a small, ritual rhythm – until finally, a long metal spear was threaded through both cheeks. My torso followed – four more hooks drawn tight with cords that stretched out into the audience.

With every pull, the tension built. Breath, pain, flashes of pleasure – each reaction rising up uninvited. When the final strain held me fully in place, the needles were drawn. Blood came after. And I smiled.

At the end, the collar was unlatched. The cords were cut. The rigging drew tight. I was lifted upright by the hooks in my wrists – arms spread wide, body trembling, face soft with something reverent. I stayed there for a while. Between suffering and exaltation.

This piece is a ritual of reclamation. An embodied reminder that pain and surrender – when chosen, when cradled in care – isn’t the absence of power. It is power.

Watch the performance here.