Spiral Body: Body Deploys
Body Deploys
April 8, 2026
7:00-9:00pm
Doors at 6:30pm
Tickets:
Free with RSVP
Body Deploys is a live sound performance by Spiral Body that explores proximity, language, and the unstable movement of voice through space. Combining live poetry, multiple cassette tape players, field and sourced recordings, and sculptural sound objects, the work unfolds as a shifting field of listening.
Poems written, recited, and recorded by Mami Takahashi circulate through several cassette players simultaneously, creating overlapping layers of voice that drift, echo, and misalign. The performers move between visibility and partial concealment, activating sound as both atmosphere and structure. Rather than presenting narrative testimony, the performance deploys fragments — spoken phrases, repetition, breath — as compositional material.
In Body Deploys, the body is not fixed at center stage. It disperses, reappears, and relocates within sound. Listening becomes spatial, contingent on where one stands and how one attends.
This project is partially supported by a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.
The International Museum of Surgical Science acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Mami Takahashi is a multidisciplinary artist from Tokyo who is currently a resident of Chicago. Using poetry, performance, visual art formats, and urban intervention, her practice explores the complexities of being an immigrant woman living in the US. Previous exhibitions and performances have taken place at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; San Francisco Art Institute; The International Museum of Surgical Science; The International Museum of Art; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Canada; Gwangju Folk Art Museum, Korea; Instituto Municipal del Arte la Cultura, Mexico and Toriizaka Art Gallery, Tokyo, among other venues. She holds an MFA from Portland State University and a BFA from the Joshibi University of Art in Japan. Takahashi is a recipient of the Ford Family Award for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art residency.
Adrian McBride is a musician and sound artist currently based in Portland, Oregon USA. McBride received BFA in Integrated Arts and Creative Writing from Bard College, and has been performed in the U.S and internationally, including at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland Oregon, U.S.A.; Monkey Town, Brooklyn NY, U.S.A; Flux Factory: Queens NY, U.S.A; Gallery gelegenheiten and Zvi HECKER, Berlin, Germany; Jardins Synthétiques Festival, Toulouse, France.