Live reading: Body of Pieces

Body of Pieces is an abstract fiction by Joanne Masding, presented as an artwork, a set of sculptures, a book. Translated here into a live event, Joanne read extracts from the book in a performance activated with props and lo-fi staging. 

The Body of Pieces text 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.  In this choreographed arrangement of extracts from the book, Joanne tested ways of animating the voices and registers of the characters, objects and materials that speak through the text. 

Looking for ways to inhabit the book and the words within it, Joanne used the theatrical technique of verbatim performance, producing a recording of her reading the text that was played into her ears through headphones and simultaneously spoken out as performance.

Live reading: Body of Pieces was made for TACO!, Thamesmead, to celebrate the launch of the book in 2024, and was livestreamed on RTM.fm