This is definitely in the top five best performances / collaborations I’ve done. And performance is what I’ve been working at the hardest the last few years, and collaboration the last 6 or 7. Fabian was extraordinary. We had met just the day before to put it together, in my studio, discovering and discussing a myriad of topics and possibilities. I was fascinated by the similarities in our overall concerns and the specific connections we have in performance style and concept, because of details in our lives, how we both found ourselves in this field. This kind of kinship, very unusual given how strange both of our work is, can make a mess, it’s a danger. It can create excess. So we worked hard in creating a shell and a set of roots for the performance, and then just improvised it. So much of Fabian’s work is so brilliant precisely because it utilises poetic, literary and performance methodology to explore that which is absolutely not connected to any of these things. This is something I also seek, to use these artforms as means of exploration, as context, not content. To scavenge and pick up with the tools, but not look at the tool themselves, in our hands. In the end we both felt an ironised but sincere engagement with masculinity was fitting and due as a subject matter, as a response to other works during the fest and general discussions around our own works and lives. Lots could be written about this, but perhaps another time, and to let the work itself speak. People’s response to it has been really gratifying, especially on the night but also since it took place. Fabian and I hope to use this as a beginning, rather than a finished dialogue. / and more of my writing on the fest at www.stevenjfowler.com/epf19