This performance was set in the intimate space of my bed to expose the physical and psychological effects of the pandemic on my body, which had undergone solitary isolation over months of sustained lockdowns during the global pandemic of COVID-19. In “sexomuerteamordolor” (Spanish for: sex, death, love, and pain) I questioned how I could utilise the vital material of my breath to pronounce my vulnerability as an effect of pandemic-time. Further, I pushed my daily online persona further through a performance which revealed the intimate spaces I had previously concealed from the public, namely: my bed, my breath, and the exposure of my body breaking down.

I used the critical materials of the 3-hour duration and the repetitive act of breathing to a degree of potential asphyxiation to realise this work. Of the breath cycles, I considered the affective relation my actions could have on the audience’s engagement with this livestream performance as my breath manifested as an accumulation of excruciating visual and sonic excess. With my open mouth, I expelled near silent screams which morphed into a pitched cry, and eventually evolved to a desperate gasp for air. This was agonising and repeated for 3-hours without breaking. In the pauses between cycles of breath, I pulled a skeleton mask over my mouth which at times served to conceal my continued screaming.

In “sexomuerteamordolor” I addressed the particular strangeness of pandemic-time, where there had been a significant breakdown of distinctions between the personal, political, private, and public through my examination of these effects on my performing body by occupying the space of video transmitted as a public livestream. The particular space and time of a pandemic further disorient the interrelated aspects of the elusive, yet universal sensations and events of sex, death, love, and pain—of which the excessive residues experienced through enduring this performance and the surrounding aspects of daily life itself were acute.