Arthlete: An Emergence in Rome (Featurette, ongoing, 2025– )An Emergence in Rome is a featurette-length experimental film and embodied research project that examines pugilism as a method of artistic inquiry. Situated between short film, experimental memoir, and practice-based research, the work uses boxing drills, breathwork, repetition, and training to explore how bodies learn, adapt, resist, and emerge.
At its core, the project investigates pugilism as a somatic research practice where strength and vulnerability coexist, and where memory is held not only cognitively but within the body itself. Drawing from contemporary performance practices, film essays, and historical lineages of gladiatorial combat, An Emergence in Rome treats the body as both archive and instrument. Training becomes a way of asking questions rather than answering them. Fatigue, rhythm, failure, recovery, and form are not metaphors. They are data.
The term arthlete is a portmanteau of artist and athlete, naming a hybrid identity and methodology that works at the intersection of studio practice and embodied discipline. Through this lens, somatic practices like boxing enter the studio not as content alone, but as structure, tempo, and a way of knowing. Repetition, constraint, and discipline are positioned as generative forces rather than limitations.
While my long-term training with Coach George Chamberlain at the University of Iowa Boxing Club and Big George’s Boxing Gym served as a primary site of inquiry, that practice directly led this research toward Rome. Training in pugilism opened a historical and ethical inquiry into gladiatorship, martyrdom, and the politics of standing one’s ground. In Rome, the work expands outward toward amphitheaters, early Christian martyr narratives, and the embodied stakes of belief, endurance, and witness.
Developed during my Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, the project now operates at the intersection of art, embodied research, and transformational leadership. The film functions as both artwork and research artifact, informing my doctoral dissertation and the development of my coaching practice, where presence, resilience, and ethical clarity are understood as trained capacities rather than innate traits.
The body on screen is not performing for spectacle. It is practicing. It is becoming.
An Emergence in Rome asks how embodied, somatic practices can reorient artistic practice and leadership alike. What does it mean to train for conviction? How do bodies learn to withstand pressure in moments that matter? What kinds of artists, leaders, and humans emerge when the body is allowed to think, remember, and stand alongside the mind?
At its core, the project investigates pugilism as a somatic research practice where strength and vulnerability coexist, and where memory is held not only cognitively but within the body itself. Drawing from contemporary performance practices, film essays, and historical lineages of gladiatorial combat, An Emergence in Rome treats the body as both archive and instrument. Training becomes a way of asking questions rather than answering them. Fatigue, rhythm, failure, recovery, and form are not metaphors. They are data.
The term arthlete is a portmanteau of artist and athlete, naming a hybrid identity and methodology that works at the intersection of studio practice and embodied discipline. Through this lens, somatic practices like boxing enter the studio not as content alone, but as structure, tempo, and a way of knowing. Repetition, constraint, and discipline are positioned as generative forces rather than limitations.
While my long-term training with Coach George Chamberlain at the University of Iowa Boxing Club and Big George’s Boxing Gym served as a primary site of inquiry, that practice directly led this research toward Rome. Training in pugilism opened a historical and ethical inquiry into gladiatorship, martyrdom, and the politics of standing one’s ground. In Rome, the work expands outward toward amphitheaters, early Christian martyr narratives, and the embodied stakes of belief, endurance, and witness.
Developed during my Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, the project now operates at the intersection of art, embodied research, and transformational leadership. The film functions as both artwork and research artifact, informing my doctoral dissertation and the development of my coaching practice, where presence, resilience, and ethical clarity are understood as trained capacities rather than innate traits.
The body on screen is not performing for spectacle. It is practicing. It is becoming.
An Emergence in Rome asks how embodied, somatic practices can reorient artistic practice and leadership alike. What does it mean to train for conviction? How do bodies learn to withstand pressure in moments that matter? What kinds of artists, leaders, and humans emerge when the body is allowed to think, remember, and stand alongside the mind?