Performance, August 1983
at Almada, Portugal
organised by Egidio Alvaro for the event
Alternativa 3, a festival of performance art.

I was invited by Egidio Alvaro to participate in an event in Almada on the banks of the Tagus River just opposite Lisbon in Portugal. The festival was in fact a festival of performance art known as Alternativa 3. My original intention was to perform again and aggressive work that I had earlier performed in Hamburg in June of that year that on arriving at Almada I realised that this was inappropriate and so I had to set to to devise a new performance work that embraced the culture that I could see and was experiencing. In my investigations near the Alternativa 3 site I discovered a source of rich red clay.......

The performance was based on my conversion from an atavistic creature to a cultured and civilised one that could be seated with the immaculate Carlos. So the performance started with me stark naked and still rubbing clay over the structure and then rubbing in the same fashion over my body until it was covered and completely red. I then ignited the beacon and fed it periodically with my scraps of wood. It blazed away with great While naked, covered with the red clay I would hide myself among the rocks near the water’s edge. These rocks covered with a small green weed which was very slippery and I had to take great care with bare feet off the slip over and damage myself. So the process of hiding darting around the rocks and periodically emerging to feed the furnace which at that point the generating a fair degree of heat.
This introduction lasted some 30 minutes but I really can’t recall its exact length as the adrenaline level in my body was very high......