Body Builder (2026)

Currently I am engaged in a research project about infamous body building legend Mike Mentzer. Throughout his life he held the firm belief that body building and philosophy were “essentially the same thing”. His final book details his methods of high-intensity workouts, as well as his thoughts on objectivism. His ideas about how knowledge is created and how reality is only ever objective and singular, are deeply and fundamentally opposed to my own. He died in 2001 of heart attack, just like his father did. His brother died of the same cause two days later.

 

For the first time in my life I felt genuine frustration about the fact that someone I was researching had passed away and I was therefor not able to email them to ask them questions. Such an email might not have been appropriate in the first place, as I felt the overwhelming desire to pry into his personal life, his feelings about his health, and the experiences that shaped his core beliefs.

As an outlet for this obsession, I have created a life-size doll of Mike Mentzer. I found online that he was 1.73 meters tall, which means we are exactly the same height. The process of creating this doll has involved me tracing my own limbs. Once I got the length correct I began padding the body with extra fabric and stuffing to create the appearance of his muscles. It has become increasingly difficult to reduce this person to his most disagreeable beliefs now that our bodies feel so intertwined.