Reviews

Because of Love Volume 1 - Warwick Arts Centre - 6th October 2013

Laura Burns - This is Tomorrow >>>
A departure from his body-based work, Franko B's Because of Love delves from the political down to the personal, exploring memory and interrogating its narrative processes. As such, its own methods of recall become the subject of the performance itself. [more >]


Because of Love Volume 1 - Norwich Arts Centre - 18th May 2013

Franko B’s Because of Love is the closest encounter I have had with Joseph Conrad’s Colonel Kurtz to date. Like a seemingly disciplined inmate, the performer paces up and down along the celluloid wall of his recollection cell, readying himself for a confrontation to come rather than sparring with images of televised conflicts, military parades or 1960s adverts that numbingly rub our eyes. Franko B makes scant effort to blend with the projected images; he just goes on with his little exercise routine as the political and religious leaders of a not-too-distant world parade one after the other on the screen: protesters are endlessly being chased by the police, or little boys dutifully re-enact the Vietnam War with toy guns and cannons. [more >]


Because of Love Volume 1 - The Place Theatre - London, 5th March 2013

Jessica Sabatini, The Public Reviews  >>>
There is no question of artist Franko B’s gift for generating live imagery of almost alchemical imagination. The conception and arrangement of Because of Love Volume 1 are striking in themselves; but it is the performance – in which he brings to bear his neutral, cohering presence and consummate, wordless candour – which finally endows this work with its uniquely moving qualities. [more >]

Honour Bayes, Total Theatre Review >>>
At first Franko B’s new work Because of Love – Volume 1 appears as resolutely non-theatrical as his previous offerings. Incorporating an uncompromisingly opaque mise-en-scene and sections of unblinking repetition that lead nowhere, it very politely puts both fingers up at the proscenium arch that surrounds it. Yet it also weaves a story through our subconscious through a highly crafted use of emotive projections, a rousing piano score, an animatronic dancing polar bear, a glitter ball, and the most effective use of Canidae heads since the bombastically theatrical Three Kingdoms. [more >]

Jareh Das, Aesthetica Magazine >>> 
As you take your seat for Franko B’s latest performance, Because of Love Volume 1, it was hard to pre-empt what this evening was about to offer. An artist renowned for using his body and blood in performances, here, we are in a theatre waiting for his most ambitious production to date to commence, with a title that gives little indication of what to expect from the work. [more>]

Eleanor Sikorski, Bellyflop Magazine >>>
When watching Because of Love volume 1, I am aware of the difference between the calm of my seated body and the noise of my mind. My perception of any performance, against my wishes, is always affected by how well or how little I know the artist/s involved. Watching Franko B on stage I observe that I hold great respect for him, not only because of what I am watching but because of what I allegedly know of him. I project qualities onto him – artistry, experience, intelligence, control. [more >]

James Morgan, en de Horse >>> 
This new work was emotional and shocking, but not at all in the way I had expected. Images were quieter and less charged than the nudity and blood-letting of his other works. I think the experience felt more deeply relatable and inclusive as a result. He was generous to the audience in a way which was profoundly different to what I can ever recall seeing on stage. [more >]


Because of Love (Work in progress / Preview) - Laban Theatre, London - April 2012

Diana Damian, Exuent Magazine >>>
Because of Love is an excursion into the semiotics of the stage from a live artist whose work has chosen to omit its hierarchical aesthetics until now; engaged in the autobiographical, Franko B makes an incision into the fabric of memory through the ritual of re-call, avoiding the representational in favour of deconstructing – and succumbing to- the overt sentimentality and romanticism associated with memory. [more >]