CARLOS SANDOVAL

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THE BODY OF LIGIA

Berlin / Germany, 2014-2020

Concept: Carlos Sandoval

Dance and choreography: Ligia Lewis

Software and wireless hardware-development: Oori Shalev

Further programming: Iftah Gabbai

Gloves construction: Jorgen Brinkman, STEIM Foundation

Comissioned by the TU elektronisches Studio, Technische Universität, Berlin.

2007, fünf+1 - Raumklangkonzerte Festival, Kleiner Wasserspeicher, Berlin

The Body was a series of live-electronic performances in which a naked female body functions as an abstract musical instrument. A female body is physically "played" by the composer, equipped with wireless pressure sensors. He applies touch, force, and restraint to trigger sounds. The sonic material itself is stored and processed on a laptop onstage, but its activation depends entirely on direct bodily contact.

The work is informed by contemporary extended instrumental techniques, in which performers push instruments beyond their intended use—scraping, striking, or reconfiguring them as objects. Here, those techniques are displaced onto the human body, presented as a deliberately “simple” interface, exposed to manipulation and control.

The piece consistently provokes polarized reactions. Some viewers read it as a critique of historical and ongoing objectification of the female body; others experience it as an uncomfortably honest enactment of power and submission—dynamics that structure everyday social relations but are rarely made explicit. The Body refuses to resolve these tensions. Instead, it situates the audience inside them, asking whether discomfort arises from the act itself, from its visibility, or from the recognition of patterns already normalized elsewhere.