Man Down

Realised during 2011 in Southeast Asia, Full Contact series focuses on two different uses of female and male bodies as a currency convertable into money and the medium and surface of the trade of money. A disposal of sexual services with blurry boundaries from go-go dancers to bar girls, from clear defined “service-charge” dualities to the simulation of long term relationships or to a seasonal work on the one hand; the traditions and lifestyle of Muay Thai fighters whose bodies are trained, tamed and moulded since early childhood on the other.

In this exchange and trade system in which money and survival reign, the bodies of those involved become the arena of pride, glory, honour, determination, rivalry, victory, defeat, potency, blood, sweat, pain, violence, pleasure and eventually some win the esteem of their families, some that of a stadium full of spectators.