At a residency in Izamal, Mexico, I devised a ritualistic boxing with people living together based on a traditional thought of the spiral of Maya’s culture remaining in the area and its perspective on nature to develop fighting as a dialogue.
Relational Boxing aims at producing a place to face something to fight and to embody mind voluntarily. The dynamics of that is awareness of various changes; we recognize through bodily feelings that the change e.g. which environment gives us, of space interacting with participants and the ring and of the situation in the ring influenced by those is never repeated as the same. This chained mutual movement circulates in one direction while revolving around three fighters in the ring. The situation there might be like one where we can actually experience the harmony and interaction with nature that are fast-forwarded in the sense of being able to see them. To embody fighting could assume the character of ritual itself which leads us into the situation to celebrate the passage of time by catalyzing layered cause-effect relationships like that.
Drawing for Maya's ’Relational Boxing’, 30x42 cm, water color, pastel. 2017
above: drawing by Deken Kodeak, social hierarchies and mathematical thought of Maya
bottom: drawing by Adrian Gomez