Image: Jason Serrano, Voncena’s Spell, 2025, Abrons Arts Center (jaamil olawale kosoko wrapped in Bronze Mylar holding a flashlight)

How might we encounter flesh beyond its surface appearance? Can obscuring the body produce new forms of intimacy, relation, or recognition? How might perception itself be choreographed?

In this embodied practice lab, performance artist and poet jaamil olawale kosoko invites students to experiment with collaging the body as a practice of perceptual and material transformation. Drawing from ongoing research into opacity, memory, and technologies of escape, this gathering considers how fabrics, costumes, found materials, gesture, and movement can interrupt familiar ways of seeing and being seen. As an ensemble, we consider what becomes possible when the body is approached as more than a fixed image or stable identity, but rather as an assemblage that can be layered, concealed, fragmented, extended, and continually remade.

Students are encouraged to bring materials they are curious to move with and through: fabrics, textiles, garments, costumes, scarves, translucent materials, discarded clothing, soft objects, or other wearable and non-wearable materials. No specialized materials or prior performance experience are required. Together, we will treat the body as a living collage exploring how altering its material conditions might allow us to perceive ourselves, one another, and the spaces we inhabit otherwise.