I am Practicing Frank, a London-based maker, poet, live artist, Butoh dancer, maker, life model and community worker. My work moves through the poetic body, site-specific engagement with nature, and the invocation of transcendence — a line of enquiry into decay and beyond that continues to be Suriashi-walked back and forth. The work unfolds as effulgent, repetitious, engaged with the natural world, often performed to no one at all; inwardly, a revelatory free-thinking that stays undisclosed. When shared, the offer to an audience is to come back home to the body, its eldritch creatures, elemental forces and pulsating universes.

Heavily influenced by the lineage of Kazuo Ohno, and lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh; Practicing Frank creates durational work that blends live art task-based approach, and the deep listening Butoh body which together invite the viewer to come back home to the present moment and the body. Another guiding influence is Martin Herbert's Tell Them I Said No, a collection of artist essays which treats refusal, disappearance and silence as legitimate artistic strategies in their own right. To me, Hsieh belongs to that lineage too: despite the extremity of his durational works, he never reveals his interior experience of them, answering only "freethinking" when asked his occupation throughout. My own practice continues to pull at this thread.

Developing an interdisciplinary approach, I have learnt under: Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, Norihito Ishii of Sankai Juku, Ken Mai, Vangeline, Marina Abramović, Martin O-Brien and Daniel Oliver among others; alongside extensive formal meditation in the Therevadā Buddhist Thai Forest Tradition. Their line of enquiry into the body and beyond continues to be carved into the body’s landscape, with the sensibility of ‘practice makes practice’.   

Practicing Frank’s work has been featured in the Marina Abramović retrospective in the Royal Academy of Art in London, Royal Albert Hall, London Decompression, L’age D’or surrealist art salon; as well as local galleries and events across London, Berlin, Florence and Agropoli. Currently they are the artist in residence for the Art of Darkness collective. 

More information on their community work can be found at www.practicingfrank.com/curriculum-vitae  

Artist Portfolio:

The Adelaide Salon, Brighton Pavillion, 3.5.26

A performance in two halves, the first a procession of a couple beyond death, moving through this realm and the next. The second a 2 hour solo Butoh exploration with 4 of artisan Dani Zwerg’s masks. Each mask is designated with an element, a posture and a life event: birth, coming home, falling in love and death. Clipped video showing a small section of Coming Home, credit to @healingizzy

About the Salon: ‘This magical evening we invite you to experience art moving through spaces animated by unexpected performance, sculpture, fashion, sound and imagery in dialogue with the Pavilion’s iconic interiors.
Over two centuries after its original conception as the most provocative, radical and extraordinary architectural and interior wonder in Europe - The Royal Pavilion will, on this unique occasion, be transformed and curated by The Adelaide Salon into a living embodiment of contemporary arts, throughout the whole Palace.' Text credit Adelaide Salon

L’age D’or, Surrealist Art Salon, Hoxton Arches, 1.5.26

1 hour performance.

‘This performative installation brings together I Am Moth—a work by CARU exploring human transformation as a symbol of grief—and No Matter the Weather, an ethereal Butoh performance by Practicing Frank. These performances are entangled into a single space: a semi suspended installation consisting of a string structure being woven like a giant cocoon by CARU and tying random members of the audience, whilst Practicing Frank embodies the weather as a cloud weeping rain. In this space the two bodies of work are merged as a dialogue on liminality, mutually holding space for broken heartedness: an exchange of energies which sublimes individuality in an intimate moment of shared collective grief.’ - Text credit to Art of Darkness

Model, Beyond Gender Project

Project developed and photographed by the immeasurable Tobias Slater-Hunt,

In his words: ‘The project seeks to celebrate these brave people that have helped  pioneer and revolutionise how we see ourselves! If only by raising questions about identity, gender and sexuality.’

More information at https://www.tobiasslaterhunt.co.uk/they-them-us/

The Shrine, London Decompression @ The Cause 18.11.25

‘Remember 🌟 Reflect 🌟 Release
Amid the lively party atmosphere of @londondecompression , Art of Darkness collective invited the audience to step into the stillness of The Shrine — an experiential installation inspired by The Temple at @burningman in Black
Rock City, dedicated to remembrance.

Just as light reflects through a kaleidoscope, here we can release our emotions and let our feelings find their true colours — memories, love, guilt, regrets, disbelief, anger, fear, sadness… — each a wavelength in the full spectrum of grief.’ Text credit to Art of Darkness

Further credits:
@londondecompression for welcoming our Shrine as a little sister of "The Temple" and ensuring we were looked after during "The Build"
The Shrine team: @dr.c.13 @lady_catnis @practicingfrank @resonates_within @talia_likes_magic @shujin_oda @pj365pj
@practicingfrank for documenting

Life Model, Neon Naked (ongoing)

I am on ongoing life model with Neon Naked, all photo credits to them.

In their own words: ‘Neon Naked offers immersive nude life drawing classes in London with a twist — vibrant UV lights, glowing body paint, and a pastel in one hand, drink in the other; more information on their classes at https://www.neonnaked.com/

Spoken Word Performance, Lotus Nova 26.11.25

Art of Darkness Collective - Artist in Residence, Dec 2025-present

Main purpose of the residency:

• To experiment with Performance Art and research Performative Art areas of interest for The Art of Darkness to focus on and/or expand.

• To contribute to and facilitate selection of Performance Art events and support in-house exhibitions.

  More info on the collective: https://www.artdarkness.com/

Qualia Sep. 2025 - No Matter the Weather, Berlin

Sapphic Life Modelling, Collective of Pleasure @ Love Affair Basement

The Consumer and The Consumed - Kings Head Theatre, Feb. 2024

The consumer, the consumed, and the fetid, mucous-coated boundary between the two are presented by Practicing Frank and Jia-Yu ChangCorti in this 10 minute performance. Conceived of as part of a performance series - part Butoh, part live-art, part unpredictable social monster and part environmental disaster - two quantum entangled mouths explore the push-pull drip-feed of entertainment, and the compulsion to consume.

Two bodies are presented simply on the stage, side by side, tangled together, overcome with an amalgam parasite rotting the skin, and below revealing dozens of fleshy mouths compelled with the act of swallowing. The dark-poetic Butoh body meets David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, this movement piece duet makes a home in the unheimlich.

Marina Abramović Retrospective - Royal Academy of Art London, 2023-24

Durational performance artist as part of the Royal Academy of Art Marina Abramović exhibition, performing in durational format
- Imponderabilia, Ulay/Marina Abramović, 1977
- Luminosity, Marina Abramović, 1997
- Nude with Skeleton, Marina Abramović, 2002

More information about the show: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/marina-abramovic

Butoh Performance Intervention - Florence & Agropoli

‘Objects Invite Me To...’ Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance - July 2019

For earlier works, works performed to no one, performance bubbles and more, have a click around my website…

artist Determinations

1. Create/foster an intimacy with the audience

2. Be open to pursue failure

3. Blur the boundaries between art and life

4. Use/develop skill/craft in performance

5. Engage with the breath

6. Break moments of comedy and tension

7. Ensure the performance is completely accessible

8. Learn from the performance itself

9. Do not fulfil the full potential of a performance; leave some unsaid and undone

10. Be kind to oneself and others in the process of making a performance/performing

Practicing Frank in aphorisms:

• Practicing Frank is a squirmy, smiley, adventurous artist

• They practice work that celebrates that they made it, it's soft, it's ugly and pretty at the same time, sometimes they can treat it bad or forget about it and then it's OK to love it again later

• Practicing Frank stands against desire and craving. They make them really cross, they create the condition for continued suffering and are unsatisfactory

• The work looks like dirt and vaginal secretions and unshaven bottom of ankles