Join us for a live performance in our galleries by Joanne Masding, who will read extracts from her first book, Body of Pieces, in a performance activated with props and lo-fi staging.
Body of Pieces follows two female characters, The Surgeon and The Dancer, as they attempt to interact with a series of hard to grasp and vaguely defined objects, and one another, within the bowels of a fictional archive. From up close with fingers and at a remove stuck behind a laptop screen, The Surgeon and The Dancer test out ways of interacting with the physical world in front of them, and of dealing with their own shifting and malleable bodies.
In the lawless space of a museum built out of written fiction, precious artefacts are eaten and melded with, body parts are carved up and ballooned outwards, and objects, artworks and children, are birthed, created and made real.
In this choreographed arrangement of extracts from the book Masding will test out ways of animating the voices and registers of the characters, objects and materials that speak through the text.
Body of Pieces is published by Bobo Books and is available to purchase at Bluecoat.