Can we ever break away from the mores of the society that birthed us? This was the query posed by artist and former world-champion gymnast Lewis Walker of their efficiency Bornsick (2025). Staged inside a columned Nineteenth-century chapel in east London, the gruelling routine, which lasted roughly an hour, didn’t a lot reply this query as complicate it. Utilizing improvised, iterative choreography, Bornsick channelled the emotional drama of Walker coming to phrases with their queer, non-binary identification within the in any other case rigidly dictated world of gymnastics.
Because the viewers entered the house, Walker lay on the ground, shrouded in a sheet of semi-transparent latex. From the balcony above, hypnotherapist Michele Occelli commanded Walker’s psychological state and inhaling actual time by way of bellowed directions. Ultimately, the lights dimmed, save for a concentrated highlight on Walker.
Immediately, an off-stage suction machine started rumbling. The latex sheet closed in on Walker, their respiration more and more laboured as they sucked treasured air via a makeshift snorkel. At one level, they set free an audible gasp. Staged or not, it propelled viewers into a right away state of vigilance. I watched on, uneasily. Clad in solely a pair of padded bike shorts, Walker rose to their haunches because the suction eased, earlier than lunging ahead onto their knees with arms splayed. Like a reptile hatching, they clawed their approach out of the latex and dragged themself onto a reflective silver crash mat.
From right here on, Walker’s actions turned erratic: every started as a chic gesture however was reduce brief. The artist clambered in the direction of stage left, doused their physique in chalk and commenced a number of excruciating laps across the stage. Initially dragging their physique with their arms, they assumed more and more technical actions: bridge-position strolling, handstand strolling, handsprings, somersaults. All through, the highlight traced their actions, capturing the smog of chalk mud because it fell from their physique with the impression of each motion. One lunging skip recalled the tripping of a wounded deer. As Walker turned visibly sweatier, the muscular tissues on their physique elevated in prominence, contracting alongside their neck and throughout their flanks.
As Walker steadied themself between every lap, geeing as much as go once more, it felt as if one thing inside them was being expunged
Their look was that of an individual without delay extremely match but completely damaged. The latter state evoked the instant sense of failure that all-too-often accompanies a queer particular person’s entrance into adolescence. The previous mirrored Walker’s a few years of dogged athletic dedication, which maybe served to deflect that very same sense of failure by, as an alternative, strengthening their vanity in a extremely impactful but constrained institutional context the place bodily exertion and excellence create a short-term sense of identification, however softness and care fall by the wayside.
Chatting with Walker afterwards, they advised me that, whereas a few of their performances weren’t conceived to be bodily difficult, this one was: they’d needed to enter one other state of consciousness. For the viewers, too, it was testing. As Walker steadied themself between every lap, geeing as much as go once more, it felt as if one thing inside them was being expunged. In the event that they saved going, absolutely they’d attain their objective: a sublimation level the place there was nothing left to show, the place their physique can be liberated from the rigidity of gymnastic coaching. However this was by no means realized.
In lieu of vocalizing feeling, Walker’s bodily motions constituted an affective language. But, the artist continuously annoyed the linguistic prospects of this vernacular, as if to echo the concept that, very like an expert gymnast’s routine, the mute performer has had every little thing predetermined for them. When, in the direction of the top, Walker landed a entrance flip, Occelli started counting out loud every subsequent flip till the twentieth, when he stopped, as had been preordained.
Walker grabbed the crash mat and commenced dropping it again down on the latex – an motion they repeated a number of instances. This segued right into a sloppy falling and rising sequence, with Walker worming across the stage and finally taking to its centre to handstand in field splits. Lastly, Occelli returned to their altar, drawing out the consonants in each phrase, slurring the top of every sentence: ‘Please, please, please take me again … I’m not one with out the ache of others.’ After a lot elaborate toiling beneath strobes, Walker returned to their crash mat, stationed initially, nonetheless caught in a efficiency orchestrated by society.
Lewis Walker’s Bornsick was commissioned by Serpentine and Edinburgh Artwork Competition. It premiered at The Spherical Chapel, London, on 21 and 22 Could and can journey to Edinburgh Artwork Competition on 23 August
Important picture: Lewis Walker, Bornsick, 2025, efficiency nonetheless. Courtesy: the artist, Serpentine and Edinburgh Artwork Competition; {photograph}: Genevieve Reeves
