Leaderboard

This is that thing about how animals "chon" and fighters "su," that I saw in Thai a while back. The biting down on a mouthpiece, closing your eyes and just rushing in to deliver a clashing attack is, indeed, driving headlong into fear in some ways. It has its own merit. But it's not the same thing as interacting with the fear itself, like sitting in it and shaping it. Ducking into a wave versus surfing it. I'm most interested in this achievement-as-stopping-point that you used Goggins to illustrate. This whole notion that you do something hard with the end of it in mind, where you get the seal of approval or the pin or whatever else that shows that you've "done" it, rather than that you can always keep doing it. That's what belts are like. That's what rankings are like. But then you have someone like Dieselnoi, who sneers at these fighters who become champion and then become lazy, no longer training hard because they've arrived, or whatever. His whole heart screams with this ferocity that, once you're champion, you've got to hold the throne and so you're training even harder, because those fuckers are coming for the king. That's a man who can sit with fear. The others are holding their breath and ducking through it. So many people ask me if I still get nervous. I must be so desensitized after so many fights. But how can you be? Every fight is a fight. They don't stop being fights. They don't stop being challenges. The game hasn't changed so that now people aren't trying to beat me, hurt me, humiliate me. All that stays the same. All that is the scary part. So why would the nerves disappear? Watching these fighters in space, how they fill it up instead of dancing around it, that's the amazing part about letting fear be part of the process. Not a tool within the process that then has a expiration. Literally part of the process the way water is part of a river.

I only read a short form version of this. You alluded to your love of the space between fighters, or distance, as the negative space and ne plus ultra of fighting. Its good to read your ideas more developed (elegantly developed) here. I am going to have to study this for a bit.

I'm really interested in this. As a photographer, in Thailand, it always feels like there is a ethical veil I have to pass through when framing a shot. Most of this feels like it has been conferred upon me, a sum total of all the ways Thais have been captured in photography already, all those motivations. With a camera you are holding a device of control. And everything that comes out of the device enters into the pre-existing narrative stream. Is there any way you can open up what those preconceived ideas are in your mind, and how you feel this can be confronted with real, live-staged, but still performed fights?

"Rich kids dont fight" -Bernard Hopkins On the art/craft thing, I often suspected the term martial arts came from someone just rendering the Latin term ars martialis into English, which should probably be translated more like warcraft.

Kevin kindly invited me to post this press release for my upcoming NYC art show here. I am a visual artist by profession, and I managed to squeeze my main love, combat sports, into the mold of art as you will see below (I shoot photos but not fight ones per se; I also do live events in the name of art). Some of you will find the language pretentious and that's ok Opens next Thursday in case anyone is local. Will be a sanctioned Ladies MT fight night with 6 amateur fights for July 12. Its same-day weigh-ins, geared especially for the higher weight classes. This is free and open to the public (as is the show), but space is limited so if you are around come early! Thanks Kevin! p.s. I am with you. I think Muay Thai is one of the World's great art forms (I believe you wrote "the greatest" and I love it). Dana Hoey, Alicia and Navajo Blanket, 2019, Lightbox, 20 x 65 inches, (Detail). DANA HOEY Dana Hoey Presents June 27 – August 2, 2019 Opening Reception: Thursday, June 27th, 5–8pm 456 West 18th Street Petzel Gallery is pleased to announce Dana Hoey Presents, a para fictional exhibition conceptualized, produced and directed by Hoey, in which the artist will show her own photographic work, the performance and sculpture work of Marcela Torres, and a live ladies Muay Thai fight night that will take place in a 20’ x 20’ boxing ring installed inside the gallery. The show, which challenges and confronts preconceived ideas and realities of feminism, combat, violence, self defense and the martial arts, will be on view from June 27 until August 2 at the gallery’s Chelsea location and will feature an opening night performance by Torres. “During the run of Dana Hoey Presents, my role will be that of Svengali,” Hoey says. “Although I make work as a single subjective, expressive artist, I prefer to emphasize my position as a participant in a larger social construct.” For her own work, Hoey will present Ghost Stories, highly subjective, surreal lightbox collages, made from images shot by Hoey, and a logo designed by David Knowles, which will recur elsewhere in the show. The people featured in these photographs will also be presented in a separate room as poster-style portraits featuring their names and occupations. In the labeled posters Hoey’s aim is to surface the power dynamic of portraiture, particularly as it relates to a white artist taking the image of non-white people. Hoey will also present a 14’ tall stop-action photograph of the great boxing World Champion Alicia “Slick” Ashley shadowboxing. Ashley, a fighter as seasoned and skilled as Mohammed Ali, holds 3 Guinness World records and many World Titles, yet she remains unknown to most Americans. “I invited Marcela Torres to be in this show because her work intersects with mine in dynamic ways,” Hoey explains. “She is first and foremost a performance artist who directly visualizes and attacks the currents of power acting on her queer brown body.” Torres works with fight training devices (speed bags, heavy bags), that have been mic’ed and the sound amplified and remixed. For Dana Hoey Presents Torres will present Agentic Mode, a 40 minute performance that employs audial soundscapes, martial arts movement and spoken word to contemplate contemporary violence as a lived war zone. The instruments she uses for the performance and the recorded sound will live on in the heart of the show after the live performance. Exhibition programs include: Thursday, July 11 Violence and Victimhood, a panel discussion moderated by Dana Hoey, featuring Nona Faustine Simmons, Emma Sulkowicz and Sarah Schulman. This panel is intended to frame the question of violence and historical, personal and cultural victimhood from viewpoints other than Hoey’s. Friday, July 12 Ladies Muay Thai Fight Night, emceed by artist JJ Chan and featuring 5 amateur fights. Doors open at 7pm and entrance is free and open to the public although space is limited. Thursday July 18 Multi-disciplinary Fight Clinic, taught by Tang Soo Do World Title holder Jo-Anne Falanga. Clinic is open to all levels including beginner, and all styles are also welcome. Dana Hoey is a feminist artist working in photography, video and social practice. She most recently exhibited Five Rings at the Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art, which featured self-defense classes for young women from the Police Athletic League and the local community. Three books are available on her work: The Phantom Sex, with essay by Johanna Burton; Experiments in Primitive Living, with essay by Maurice Berger; and Profane Waste, in collaboration with the writer Gretchen Rubin. Her persistent interests are conflict and the possibility of political art. Marcela Torres brings into action performance, objects, workshops, and sound installations that investigate the interpellation of our diaspora. Petzel Gallery is located at 456 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011. Gallery hours: please note that the gallery will be open on Friday, June 28th and Saturday, June 29th from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM. Thereafter, our summer hours begin Monday, July 8th, and we are open from Monday to Friday from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM. For press inquires, please contact Ricky Lee at ricky@petzel.com, or call (212) 680-9467.

Yes I am presenting a live visual paradigm. I am presenting a live form of my belief system and I am grateful to the fighters for showing up. In return I hope I offer them a good, well run and well supported fight context as well as a chance to fight which is more rare for the bigger women. Its interesting. One of the preparators (people who handle artwork professionally) is a returning Army Ranger who trained other Rangers and was also flown abroad to train IDF fighters (he has some politely harsh things to say about Krav Maga lol). He is currently in the process of trying to learn non-lethal fighting (he's not talkative but I reckon he shares y'all's opinion of spinning kicks in live combat . You might say he is coming from the opposite direction that I am in enlisting local female fighters to live this enlivening process of being fighters in public. He is coming back from lethality to locate an art form.

I definitely get this distinction and agree regarding combat sports with no grappling. I cannot resist defending karate against this though, as I think the gap in this case is a very different one involving time in a completely different manner. Its so freaking fast and you fight from so far outside that you enter fight space lightning fast and exit it as well. I think your ideas can be worked out here at least in some kinds of karate though of course i get why everyone loves to put karate down. The gap is not spatial, its about being out of time, risking a complete departure from conscious time. What I love and prefer about Muay Thai though is its seeming slowness in comparison, the relaxation into shuffling, the illusion of stillness.

Yes, these are not "opposites" in Thailand's culture, I think I've come to understand, therefore in fight culture here as well. Westerners are somewhat obsessed with the "real" fight, and paint Thailand sometimes, maybe Phuket fights in particular, as potentially dubious and fake. You have the "tuk-tuk driver fights" and always the fear that if you come here, especially short term you will be caught in a fake fight. Westerners long for the "real" fight. It's part of the fantasy (ironically enough). But, as I said, these are not opposites to Thais. Instead fake (performed, staged, theatricized) and real exist in a kind of continuum. The presence of one does not cancel out or negate the other. A single fight can have both, performed elements and what others might call "real" elements. Is the Ram Muay real? Or is it fake? Well, its performed. Is a fighter's nobility after being hit real? or fake? I think this comes down to that performed elements, for instance public face, are very real things in the culture. Appearances have a weight to them. They aren't just thin veils to be torn down, revealing what is real underneath. People, families, communities work hard to create appearances. Fighters work hard to create them. How could this all be "fake"? It's no more fake than a painting is fake. (sorry to go off on this, but I find this cultural difference, and the mis-understanding from westerners really interesting)

THANK YOU FOR THE HIGHEST PRAISE and CLEAREST UNDERSTANDING I WILL GET! I read Metaphysics of Muay Thai and agree 100% its an art form of the highest sort. A big question in academic photography of the 90's was "what happens to truth now that we have digital photography". I say the 90's because photography is so far gone from believability now that everyone understands things can be faked. I made work that straddled that line - below is a picture of two women who used to fight with their sisters as children. I had them slapping each other etc, grappling in the sand before the picture. Their emotions (irritation, anger, pleasure at grappling) are "real" but their actions were performed. This is very helpful you pulled this thread out of the performance/ reality question in Muay Thai. Thank you.

I don't find your work exoticizing at all. I think its because there is almost always text accompanying the photos, that identifies the subject and specifies their occupation as well as what is special about them. I've got collages like you see above, and this is typical for a visual artist rather than classic photographer - you just take the image of someone and completely separate it from the person. A former colleague of mine is a most aggregious offender in my opinion. I love the photos (they are of a Goshkagawa, Japan School Basketball team), but in a NYC, primarily fancy white context they just look like she is using Asians as ciphers and stand-ins for all women. I did something unusual in this context, which is I made the collages ie; imposed my ego on people, but i also included an introductory room of "posters" (actually high production matte prints but pinned to the wall). Each poster features name and occupation. Its just basic courtesy but emphatic in this context and functions just the way your images do on social media - identify and raise up the subject. Feminism: I don't like the conventional idea that women are the kind peacekeeper mother earth types who would run the world better if we had a chance. Blegh. We are just as flawed and violent as anyone else. Yes there is something called "toxic masculinity" and yes we need more seats at the table and yes this would change things for the better, but instantly associating us with kindness etc is weakening. We need strength. Combat violence: I didn't write that haha. Just noticed it. I guess "violence" is correct but I am just talking here about something everyone here understands, which is that yeah fighting is about the violence, but its more about the love of the form and a kind of love of your opponent, not anger. Self-defense: I think self-defense is so much more about attitude. When you train martial arts you train offense at the same time. In conventional self defense class there is an assumption the woman will be a victim. Now, this is true statistically, but there is no real defense without offense which is usually not trained in self-defense context. Martial Arts: same deal - people think its about some kind of primitive violence, rather than a refined art form. I will just show them by having live fights They probably won't understand, but I will feel better.

I also have to say, this is incredible. I love, love, love that the performed nature of fights is inviting into an artistic space. I think this is something that Thailand already appreciates at a certain level, that the difference between the "real" and the "artifice" is not a logical dividing line. I also have to say that bringing fighting to art falls in with the things that I was trying to talk about in my metaphysics of Muay Thai. The idea that what fighters are doing is close to what artists are doing.

Yes, I didn't mean to suggest, or maybe emphasize how Vipassana and your yoga instructor are giving different lessons. I may have accidentally done that. I think it's what you say, that all of these endeavors are about "staying in" as a mode of growing awareness, and betterment. First there is just plain old forcing yourself to stay in it, whatever it is. But the gradual challenge is learning to relax in the very thing that is triggering all your alarm bells --- "Get out!" That the really interesting thing about talking about certain kinds of fighting as possibly very high artforms. You have aspects of traditional martial arts which strike one as kinds of meditations, or disciplines modeled on fighting. In many of them there is no fighting, or they did not develop in the modern era through fights. So, you have a kind of poetry of fighting in some of these arts. Others of them did develop through sport fighting, but often under odd-rules, maybe distortive rules (like point fighting, etc). Then, on the other hand, as you suggest there are things like meditative practices, or something of a more meditative physical discipline like yoga. These are reaching for states, qualities of mind (and body), but we do not thing of them as arts. There is no performance, no presentation, so in a strange way they are unshared, at least in the artistic sense. You would not watch yogi confront the emptiness of the world, just sitting there. I mean, one might, but that isn't really the path. Then on the other hand you have combat sports, which largely are seen as just two people trying to hurt each other, end each other, if you talk lowest common denominator, supposedly quite far from these otherwordly, or transformative practices. But what is most interesting to me is that the fighting arts, at least in those that have evolved over decades and decades of countless real fights (boxing and Muay Thai come to mind as maybe the best examples of grassroots development), you have an art which speaks to all the things the Shotokan Karate Master is invoking in his transmission of katas, or the 17th century swordsman displayed in duel, or a yogi on the mountain seeks, or how yoga teachers guide students forward. And this is achieved, or really manifested in the fighting space, and how the fighter relates to that empty zone which is full of fear. And what is amazing is that this battle with the empty zone, the trained, rhythmed, improvised, prodded, wading glide in, is put on display. What others in other practices are doing internally, is made real (visible), so that it can be shared, and spread, with minds taking it in at whatever level they wish. I think all these practices, and maybe really so many more, are of a single thing. What is notable about the fighter is that they are working in "fear". That is the canvas they are working on. And it's sitting right there in front of them, for all of us to see. And...very few people look at it (the caesura), intentionally. There's a beautiful short story written by Kafka called A Hunger Artist, a many in a traveling show who sits in a cage and basically just starves himself to death...well, not death, but for Kafka, into invisibility and disappearance. It's been many years since I read this, but it invokes Kafka's immense self-hate, and symbolizes all the ways that he deprives himself, isolates himself, so much so that it becomes a kind of artform. He definitely is also calling to mind the ascetic, who rarifies himself into an almost spiritual state. Kafka is really talking about himself as a writer. There is just a tremendous end to this story ---- and if anyone is going to read it, it's linked above, spoiler below ---- He suffers kind of culmination of his invisibility, his growing thinness, he expires in his feebleness...because he is forgotten, he lost the attention of audience, if I recall. And then with a suddenness a panther is placed in this same cage. This just struck me like a hammer when I first read it so many years ago: " “All right, tidy this up now,” said the supervisor. And they buried the hunger artist along with the straw. But in his cage they put a young panther. Even for a person with the dullest mind it was clearly refreshing to see this wild animal throwing itself around in this cage, which had been dreary for such a long time. It lacked nothing. Without thinking about it for any length of time, the guards brought the animal food. It enjoyed the taste and never seemed to miss its freedom. This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to the point of bursting, also appeared to carry freedom around with it. That seem to be located somewhere or other in its teeth, and its joy in living came with such strong passion from its throat that it was not easy for spectators to keep watching. But they controlled themselves, kept pressing around the cage, and had no desire to move on. " This is what is so beautiful about the fighter, and the fighter's art. In relating to the void, the caesura between them and their fear, in going through endless training of absolute rigor, and being broken again and again, in doing all the things that I've described above in the first post, they are somewhat like the Hunger Artist. They are painfully submitting to the fear, and becoming relaxed in it. But, transformatively, they are also doing this as the Panther. They are, potentially and apogetically both the yogi (transcending common fear, bounded fear) and the panther, fully embracing their animality and vitality, as someone connected powerfully to the earth and the full stream of being that they are a part of. It is the starved and the feasting, together.

It kind of amazes me that I wasn't heading in this direction, but ended up there with the example of Pi Nu's training of Muay Thai. There is very little "correction". A touch, just to tap you toward where you should be, but a lot of it is just stretching you. His padwork is legendary. He mostly just finds your limit - where you are generally, but also that day - and pushes it. He's looking for equanimity in the face of failure. It's almost as if its the only thing he is looking for. Standing in the fire. This doesn't produce a good or great fighter in a short period of time, but I can see how it connects up with this larger picture of relating to the pain, the fear, the gap. It's a kind of gap training. In other gyms, perhaps in the west, you might be beat on until you "toughen up", but this is a different sort of thing it feels like. It's almost just teaching you to be a salamander who chooses to stand in the fire, because the fire is its element. Not in a tough sort of way, but in an aesthetic, almost spiritual sort of way. What is compelling is that in Muay Thai (and other forms of fighting, but perhaps uniquely in Muay Thai due to it's history and cultural core) we have an artform that expresses this very human, metaphysical venture, in terms of tempo, rhythm, space and violence. The relationship to the gap is right there in front of us to be witnessed and experienced, and even relived (in video). It is an artform, perhaps of the highest form because it enacts and aestheticizes this primordial metaphysics.

No worries I feel more educated than before :). Thank you for this elaboration. I think I grasp the concept the way you do. I say grasp because i is more the feeling of having them on the tip of my tongue. I remember this post very well. I am not sure to what degree Vipassana, yoga philosophy and art of sak yant overlap, but to me it all seem to stem from the same idea of accepting what is, instead of trying to escape from it. Surrender to the now. Most of my yoga teachers have emphasized the necessity of stop trying to escape from the present (the difficult, uncomfortable pose) and simply breathe into it and just accept what is. By pointing out how, when being told to stay in a difficult pose, our minds keep trying to convince us to think about other things or trying to calculate how long the teacher will hold us in that pose, we discover how we all try to escape from the now (what is). Adding the physical experience to the mental thought process is very effective for understanding. The same teacher I paraphrased also once told me that the most skilled martial artists are not the ones who can endure the pain, but the ones who choose not to absorb it. Sort of pain is inevitable, suffering is voluntary kind of thought.

Can I add Dedduang Por Pongsawong to the list? He might be an interesting one because he is so short but made his style work against much larger fighters. He also was one of the first to start really blasting people with repeated low kicks from what I am told. Never won a championship, but highly respected by many fighters of that era. I can set things up if needed.

https://www.awakeningfighters.com/athletes/eva-naranjo/ ^A fairly good profile on Eva, although it doesnt record her winning the WPMF 115 world title. I couldn't find anything on Jose. Muay Thai isnt in the Olympics but it is in the World Combat Games which may have been what the news report was talking about. Spain did get a gold medal there. I remember there used to be a good Spanish fighter from 7muaythai Gym.

This is the extended passage from Sylvie's post on her sak yant, to which I referred above and was remembering. She says it better than I ever could. It influenced me in these thoughts on the gap. Re-reading it now it is interesting that she directly compares it to the kind of training Kru Nu does in terms of Muay Thai, the kind of stretching of a person required: I was given the option to stop by Arjan when the tigers were complete, but I didn’t want to stop. So we kept going. And there’s something in the process of knowing that you just have to endure, that you can’t stop it, that is a very keen lesson for life, for Muay Thai, for existence in general. It’s hard because part of what makes pain tolerable is the knowledge that it will stop. A “this too shall pass,” kind of thing. But you’re sitting there with this pain that makes the whole body quake involuntarily and it’s not passing; there’s no end. So I breathe and try to just be in the moment, but the moment is filled with pain and so it’s becoming this eternity of pain and I can’t think or distract my mind until it ends, because I don’t know when it will end. I just have to breathe and accept it. My pain tolerance is considered high – but this was different, even compared to the Sangwan I received across my chest. Near the end, Arjan just kept adding and adding to the middle – the most painful parts. He was putting in the spells – that part is the magic, a syllable here, two syllables there. He would stop for a moment, wipe down the whole piece and there would be this fleeting feeling a kind of tender care of the damp cloth cleaning off the sting. I’d look into the reflection of the doors and see him pick up the marker; and he’d pick up the needle again… all I could do was shake my head and accept. I could not make it stop. It stops only when it’s finished. I did cry, involuntarily. Only near the end, only for a few minutes, and Arjan “tsk-ed” me, quietly chiding me for losing control and would ask gently but firmly, “Sin-wee-uh, wai mai?” (“Can you endure?”) And I’d calm myself, breathe and carry on. I know that for sak yant in general you cannot, or simply do not, stop even if someone is breaking down. The Arjan gives you the chance to recollect yourself but they don’t stop to do it. What’s amazing about Arjan Pi – and I’ve never been tattooed by another Arjan, so I don’t know if this is unique to him or not – is that he actually seems to go a bit harder when you betray your struggle. It’s like, “if you want to let your mind break down then it will be worse; get your shit together, that’s how you make it easier.” He doesn’t say that, of course, but that’s the way the pain teaches you… or directs you. My trainer at Petchrungruang, Pi Nu, does something similar. He’ll put more pressure on you when you start to struggle, to see where your breaking point is. He’s stretching limits – or giving you the opportunity to do so, really – and if you figure out how to relax and just keep answering then he’s happy and you’ve grown. If you break, if you give up, he’ll take into account whether it’s a bad day for you or whether your limits are just too rigid, if they’re “set,” so to speak. Pi Nu guides young boys to become Lumpinee fighters and champions this same tacit, “find the solution within yourself,” manner that Arjan Pi practices with the tattooing of yant. And that’s what’s so transformative about this experience. Have you heard folks talk about using psychedelics as a “shortcut,” to glimpse the shores and open the mind to islands of consciousness it may not have known, but then you have to do the hard work through meditation and living to get back to those shores for real… to actually touch them? That’s what being tattooed by Ajarn Pi is like. He’s a teacher and a guide. Pain is this river and it’s moving and you can kind of work around within its limits but you just have to let it carry you to wherever it’s going. This last experience was the most intense ever. I realized, very early on in the process, that most of the physical pain we experience in life is incredibly short – it’s very intense but temporally very short – a burn, banging your toe on a table, a cut, a fall, even a broken bone will fade into an ache after a pretty short time. Most of us are lucky to not live with chronic pain. So to sit here, voluntarily, and endure nearly 4 hours of constant pain is something unlike anything else. You have to sit in it; you have to realize you’ve chosen this." from Transformation and Belief: Receiving my Sak Yant Sua Ku and Takroh

What specific physical actions in Muay Thai (or boxing) do you feel inflame or aggravate the injury?

And I express this single thing here: (custom ring canvas on gallery floor, awaiting ring delivery. wall is 14' mural of Alicia "Slick" Ashley shadowboxing).

Sylvie has long talked about forming a single thing with her opponent, Spinoza - my favorite philosopher - would advocate for that.

Yes. It does. Its a demonstration of rarified conflict. Your average American white woman is well-versed in passive aggression which, while effective, is not a dominant way to go. I want access to dominance.

The Psychology of the Space I've had some people tell me that they don't quite understand what I mean by "fight space" or the gap. If you position the two fighters it's simply the space that falls between them. In a sculpture it could be called the negative space, the space where no material is, the hollow space between them. But, visually what it is and its psychological import comes out of how the brain represents the body to itself, in a kind of virtual space. It's what allows us to complete physical tasks without looking, or be able to feel the end of a point of a pencil, as if it is an extension of your fingers. It's our mapping of space, and ourselves in it. In the sci-fi movie Dune there is a great little fight scene which depicts elements of this physio-psychological space, as in this sci-fi world there are protective force fields in hand to hand combat. These force field zones invoke our own zone of protective sensitivity, the dangers we feel instinctively when too close. Interestingly, in the scene, the way the shield is defeated is by moving the blade slowly. This can be related to the use of tempo in fighting, and in really high level fighting the delay, moving off-beat, which is something I'd love to explore a little in a future post. This matches up with the metrical meanings of how caesura is used in poetry, coincidentally enough, the way caesura, or gaps work against anticipated rhythm: watch it here Here there are two envelopes, the proximities that surround a single body. The gap or fight space is composed, in a way, in the area where these envelopes overlap. The movie scene maybe allows us to think about our heightened sense of space, around our selves, and how when moving through the gap it isn't just bodies clashing, but it is also the virtual efference copy of our motor actions, and a kind of halo body of that sensitive space that surrounds us, as both social and predatory beings in the world.

IFMA is quite different than Thailand's Muay Thai, so much so that Thai athletes were regularly befuddled by the scoring. I guess the way to say it is IFMA is kind of a compromise between Thailand's Muay Thai and International Kickboxing aesthetics, designed to invite International participation and ultimately success. Even wearing headgear changes the fight space, but the differences are numerous. It would be almost impossible to export Thailand's Muay Thai to the rest of the world and have it be comprehensible. I think IFMA did a pretty good job translating it all so it can graft onto western participation, but its a very different thing, imo.

Makes sense. Appreciate the clarification.

It's not so much TKD, but in that book tracing the history of Karate itself, and how far it came from it's actual martial roots. It passed through a bottleneck in which almost all of its fighting context was removed, compressed into kata and Budo practices. It became quite rarified. And then modern Karate all descended from that bottleneck. I have some problems with this Ur-sourcing, this abstraction in its DNA. Then, it developed along various lines, each of them incorporating varying aspects of fighting, but each of those aspects also quite codified and restricted. For me this heritage of development means that there is a highly mediated relationship to the full contact fighting space that arts like Thailand's Muay Thai or western boxing were shaped by much more directly, as they developed through 10,000s and 10,000s of iterations of fighting in a very challenged fighting space. Altering the fighting space, the fear zone, providing safe passage or landing spots, really changes the metaphysical quality of what it means to relate to and stay in that space. This is just my opinion of course, but I find these difference qualitative.

It think for me almost all rule-cushions that cordon off the space and give "safe zones" all work to reduce what I am now calling the "heroic value" of fighting, which is to say, the metaphysical component of working on the substance of fear. All these fighting practices, as they have moved away from fear-fabric, certainly are admirable, but they lack the great substance which I feel has given fighting its value in culture throughout the ages. That isn't to say that they lack value, but they lack that particular value, at least by degree. I have the same feeling with IFMA Muay Thai, or Kickboxing (with its rule cushions). In a sense it's a little like watching a high-wire act, and a low-wire act, for me. Or, that the degree-of-difficulty, the degree of calm, required and performed is just at a different threshold. I know this will sound like I'm putting certain fight forms down, but I choose not really to look at and criticize those things I find to be lessor, rather than, it's more that I'm trying to celebrate the thing, the quality, I find greater. Part of the reason I am enamored with the notion of the fear-gap is that I think it can tap into so much of how we experience ourselves in the world, both physically and emotionally. So trials by fear-gap, for instance in full contact fighting, make very interesting acme case-studies.

The difference in space is interesting. You can travel on one leg before throwing the kick in TSD, which makes distance play a very live & central part of the form. We are both editing as we go. I am going back to read your clarifications. But I am also going to drop this line of thought in favor of returning to your more central points.

Back fists to the head allowed., usually the side of the head, no face-punching Kicks are fucking scary though, and of course they are longer. I think part of the problem here is you are primarily talking about tae kwon do because of that book (which is on my shelf). I hear no end of shit-talking about tae kwon do at the tang soo do gym, perhaps for some of the same reasons But I get your distinction.

I don't follow Karate, but I assume you cannot punch the head with the fists. This is huge change in spatial and fear dynamics. If you can't strike me in the head with your hand (or even elbows) as I move through the fighting space, this is a vast difference in how I will move through that zone.

It's definitely an artform, as are all fighting sports. The problem with Karate (at least point fighting Karate) is that without blows to the head you are changing the intensity of the gap, the fear-space. Part of what elevates fighting is that fighting triggers some of our most primal, defensive reactions and instincts. Protecting the head when moving through the space, the centering of the perceptive self in the head is a large part of what gives charge to the negative space. When this charge is lowered, or alleviated in someway, the heroic quality, the poetic value falls, just as a mater of course. Of course there are things that happen in that space which are full of fear. You can still be hurt, and still be humiliated. But, with the head off limits it is just a very different thing, making it hard to compare to fighting sports/arts where the head is at risk.

So many boring opposites in Western culture. Language forces this and I like to play with presenting supposed opposites (a fight is two "opposites" but I play with them to show their dynamic interaction and lack of separateness).

Extremely fascinating.

So, in a sense you are presenting the alter of the motherly, nurturing essence of women (feminism)? But in a more complete picture of, yes, violence. But also in the martial sense of a respectful, bound practice. Does that get close to the kind of message of women fighting in a gallery might have?

Thanks Tyler, great info. I'll look into Super export shop as well

Sometimes it can just be repetitive stress on muscles and tendons unused to the strain. The thing that worked for me better than anything else was massage. I had tennis elbow and couldnt hold pads it was so bad. Had a small tear that had healed but left acar tissue. I had to massage and break up the scar tissue to get blood flow into the area to heal. It was almost like magic after about 6 months of no relief even with braces on. Deep tissue and circular motions to really break it up. Otherwise what Kevin said. Check how you do things to see if there are possible corrections to be made there.

We use Vegas Pro 16 which is pretty comprehensive. They have non-pro versions which are just fine too. For me the workflow was pretty easy to learn. You just drag clips into a timeline and do stuff to them, then render it all. Aside from a big Windows purchase I strongly, strongly recommend Kinemaster for the mobile phone << that's the android link, there is an iOS version as well. Hands down this is the best designed app of any sort I've ever encountered. Sylvie learned how to use it in 5 minutes, and it's so intuitive that she now edits short videos on it for sheer enjoyment. I think there is a free version of it, not sure. But...it would be a great training ground for any desktop version of an editing software, or at least for Vegas 16. It's the same basic interface.

I would have someone check your form on the inflamed side (boxing hook & MT hook can be different, plus have someone check the height of your elbow/angle of it on that punch). I’ve had assorted injuries that have been corrected through better technique. Others, such as a year or so of inflamed wrist tendons, simply improved as my bones & muscle hardened & tempered around them. But maybe you are past that. Ice! Copper bracelets! Voodoo! I hate injuries. Good luck .

Corollary 1: This argument also provides a framework for understanding why any striking art (entertainment form, sport) that does not include grappling is at deficit. The reason for this is that if there is no grappling amid striking it encourages hold-your-breath-ism, which means when faced with the gap, the fear, you can just grit your teeth and throw your combo. Get to the other side of the gap and be "safe". You see this all the time in various kickboxing timeouts and ref breaks. The relationship to the gap is just two people holding their breath and jumping over it, to "safe" (the cessation of fear). This is related to aggressive attacks that Jack Slack humorously has called "Karate, karate, karate!". I'm over-simplifying it, and this certainly isn't the intention of for instance kickboxing rules that are imagined to unleash "pure action", but it is what evolves when proximity has no consequence and produces a "timeout". It could be argued that one of the hidden reasons why MMA has thrived in terms of entertainment is that it produces a richer sense of distance and danger. MMA fighters have an inordinate fear of the gap, by and large, but some of this is because they can't just jump through the space and call a time out on the other side. By privileging grappling MMA gives the fighter no safe space, they are forced to more or less continually deal with fear (at least when standing up). Striking arts that remove all or most of grappling are seriously compromising the very logic of the caesura. There is no safe space. Boxing makes an interesting example in this, in that because it's a highly developed artform evolved through decades and decades of full contact fighting, and the spatial skill levels are as high as those shown in the classic Muay Thai of Thailand, it rivals Muay Thai in terms of the metaphysics of the caesura, the work in fear. True, there is no explicit grappling in western boxing, but infighting, clinch and dirty boxing up close are art-forms within the ruleset. And, all the proximate spaces are fraught with difficulty. You cannot box effectively by just holding your breath and throwing combinations, and waiting for the clinch break. I also suspect that the reason why so many top level Muay Thai fighters transitioned to western boxing and had great success there wasn't so much because of their "hands" (individual skills), but because of their fundamental spatial awareness, the priority of the relationship to the fear gap. Not needing to grab the side of the pool, the ability to tread water and engage for extended periods in space.

When I first started training there was a big scary guy like that, and I jumped in sparring with him on my second week. He kicked me in the head three times consecutively but didn't hurt me once. Was a cool dude. One time we had a guy who was pretty alright at fighting come in, and he was roughing up the newbies, and the big scary guy kicked the shit out of him for it.

Skarbowsky has told us he'd be glad to film with us when he visits Bangkok, so hopefully that one will happen.

Yes, Somrak has been on everyone's list, including our own! We got very, very close to filming with him when he had his own gym in Bangkok. We visited and filmed there (he wasn't around, so we filmed with some of his trainers), and then we visited again just to talk with him, and how do I say this delicately...he was several sheets to the wind, but kind of amazing. He said then he doesn't train people anymore, at all really, and we got the sense that he spent almost all his time in the part of the gym where chicken fighting was being done. But, he took Sylvie in and said yes, he would definitely film with her for the project (photo below). So, we were almost there! But, he then lost his gym in a very heavy gambling debt (I think). We literally drove up to it before the news broke and it was completely bulldozed. Like it was nothing but a lot. Without a gym, and with probably a somewhat carefree lifestyle, it will take some doing to get to the place where we can film with him. My own intuition is that this is something not to rush or push, but to just let it naturally evolve. When it happens it will be special.

There is in Muay Thai a definite -do dimension of Muay Thai, which Sylvie expressed some of in the quote below. It's in the scoring aesthetic, in the comportment of fighters and krus, probably buried in the agricultural roots of the fighting and its performance. But any Thai involved in the Muay Thai of fighting would think it strange if you tried to isolate it, or make a discipline of it, make a Dao of it. I think we in the west (affluent as we are), can be drawn to the Dao of Muay, partly because of our affluence, but also because we are outsiders to the culture of Muay Thai. I'm not saying it's without merit or worth to contemplate it, but sometimes the "It's all about respect" western stories of Muay Thai feel like ideological fantasies of our own privileged. I'm not sure about that, but it feels that way. Sylvie quote:

Admin note: this post has been locked because the original post has been significantly edited changing its context and meaning. Forums conduct discussions through replies not through edits. The title has been edited for clarity toward the original post. Muay Thai in England had a contradictory origin, the introduction was through Master Sken who was a pupil of Taek Kwon Do (TKD) Master named Sook Joon Ahn. Although Thai, Sken (Sken Kaewpadung), Toddy (Thohsaphol Sitiwatjana) and Master Woody (Chinawut Sirisompan) were actually dissidents of Taekwondo, that is, their technique did a mix of Boxing and Taekwondo, allied to a technique of Boxing and Muaythai of basic level, of his friend Master Toddy. In the initial period many athletes of the British TKD were fighting in the Muaythai, precisely because of this influence of Master Sken, where a different "plastic" or techniques that did not seem of the MuayThai were perceived in that period and yes TKD in the events of England, very kick high, jumping, spinning, restricted use of knees, had no elbow, little clinch and rarely did a knockout. With internal disagreements, Toddy and Woody begins to form their own group, for even with their Muaythai only Basic level. Some time after such facts is implanted in England the Royal Thai Airlines, which culminates with the coming and flight of Thailand with this the immigration of several Thais. Factors added, which as an immediate consequence, have improved the technical level of the British Muaythai, so much so that they had a great world champion, the fighter Ronnie Green who was the first Western to unify the titles of KickBoxing and Muaythai. With this these Thais who actually originated in Muaythai pass the informs that Sken, Toddy and Master Woody. They were not Muaythai fighters and had never fought at Muaythai in Thailand. So much so that none of the three have record of fight, photographic or film. And neither Mauythai event in Thailand. The solution found by them was to speak that they teach not Muaythai and yes Muay Boran, the ancient art of Thai warriors for battle on the battlefield. It was then that they resolved to revive Muay Boran, who was in danger of extinction. Consequently, he not only persevered in his own personal formation in this art, but began to teach his students in the same way. With this as no one knew what was Muay Boran no one could dispute what they were taught. In this way he began to insert graduations in the Muaythai (something that does not exist) invented uniform saying that it should be used in Muay Boran because they were traditional Thai uniform which is also a lie. To make it official they decided to create Muay Boran organizations. Woody creates the Kru Muay Thai Association (KMA) and later the World Muay Boran Federation (WMBF). With the success and worldwide fame of Muaythai achieved in MMA competitions. Woody advised by Iranian fighting promoter Sasan Ghosairi decided to create the World Muay Thai Organization (WMO) so they could sell Muaythai's cursor and graduations around the world.

These uniforms were the invention of woody. They did not exist in the time of the muay boran.

Kevin and Woody WOODY