e l i z a b e t h p o r t e r
He seems to me a fire burning
with Franko B
St Mary AlderMary
Watling Street, London
commisioned by Moot
2014
There was a moment on the day I first meet him, when a few words spoken by Franko B, like a small smoulderng spark fell against me.
That spark flamed up, changing the way I think; how I think of the world and how I think of myself in it.
I wonder now how our paths must have crossed, weaving across this city over the decades that we’ve both lived here. Yet never meeting.
There was a time when I existed in a dull twilight, shuffling at the edge of darkness, clinging to silence, afraid of the light and the clamor of life.
Scratching and tearing at paper, scrippling with black and crimson ink, drawing crosses and wounds.
Slowly struggling to find a lanquge I could understand, something I could use to explain.
While I searched a way out of that place Franko was out in the streets, in the clubs.
Using his own body as a canvas, drawing crosses and wounds in his skin with his own blood.
Naked, frayed. tumbling with passion; shouting out, screaming out his life, his fear, his love.
Blazing out like a beacon. If I had seen him then what might have I become?
He seems to me a fire burning. A gift given with courage and rage and love.
Gold flames out, enduring, unchanging, while everything around it corrodes away.
Yet the most malleable of all metals, it can be beaten out so thin as to become translucent and gradually wears away molecule by molecule.
In this encounter I ask Franko if I might gild his scars, the marks left by the gestures; the archive of his live;
while listening to the stories of how they were made.
stills from film by Ilona Sagar
all that I have
ash and gold
stills from film by Claire Poulter