This performance was part of Speculative Bodies, an evening of screenings and performances held as part of the exhibition Unruly Bodies. The event proposed that the body is not a unified whole, or opposed to nature. The works included excavated myth and archive to enact speculative figures that reach through history, troubling categories of the ‘human’, and unseating normativity.

Metamorph is a long-term collaboration between Holly Hunter, Assia Ghendir, Verity Coward and Clémentine Bedos. The transmedia project includes a 16mm film, along with prosthetics, text, sound and performance-based works, which draw on the myth of Daphne, who transforms into a laurel tree to escape the rape of Apollo. In Metamorph this narrative – which is traditionally interpreted as resulting in Daphne’s ‘eternal silence’ or ‘loss of self’ – is reframed through a queer, transcultural and multi-species lens to consider alternative interpretations around agency and the character’s relationship to landscape.

Performance Credits: Metamorph performance, 2023, Goldsmiths CCA.

Video Production by Kunstraum Productions with:

Videography and editing by Leon Dee

Sound Recording by Isaac Briscoe.

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