Body Abstracts is an immersive performance by the artist Iri Berkleid who spans themes such as physical labour, art and materiality through the story of a symbiosis and a separation in 5 “tableaux”. For this performance, the artist invited the performer Jodie Williams, the poet and musician Santiago Aldunate and the music composer Tamas Juhasz to activate her installation. A first public version of 18 minutes took place at SOMA Marseille in October 2022. 

The action takes place in an evolving installation in which a cellulose membrane, resembling human skin, grows during the month running up to the performance. Jodie’s body is transformed by the fusion with the membrane and emerges in enigmatic forms in the bathtub before spilling out, body to body, into the performance space. The separation of the two bodies marks the second part of the performance, where Jodie becomes the conscious master of the material. She now handles the material practically, yet still sacredly, under the improvised sounds of Tamas who sets the tempo for her ascension to the final scene, her projection, the creation of a mural from the remaining pieces of material.

Her actions are abstractions of Iri Berkleid’s real process and experience of working with this matter, highlighting the labour and physical effort, the intimacy and fusion, the constraints and conflicts of working with a new materiality. The audience is invited to a complete sensory experience, in proximity with odours, sounds and textures; a new environment, displacing them to reconsider their notion of abjection and awe.

In Body Abstracts,  Iri Berkleid invites the musician Santiago Aldunate to frame the work, giving a sensitive impulse to start the action. Their voice leaves a gentle trace carried through the duration of the piece until the audience are reunited with the music in the form of a concert at the end. Jodie, exiting the performance space after the final act, leads a hypnotized audience into the concert of the guest musician, a familiarity that now relieves the trance of the performance environment.