Working with live and recorded voice, Ilona Sagar draws on the 

mechanics of speech, consumption and the ambiguous fleshy boundary implied in the phonology of voice and language.

Originally devised as part of private dinner at STO Werkstatt that drew sound, architecture and food together, The Curl Of Their Acetone Tongue has been specially reworked for The Performance Studio to accompany a new live work by Ilona Sagar, Prosodic Breakers.  

Prosodic Breakers is a piece that uses speech patterns, gestures and the body movements of a group of performers as an interface to examine our multi-faceted relationship to the divergent ideologies surrounding health and personal wellbeing.

Working with contact microphones on their neck and chest, each performer will act as a mediator for a narrative that explores the history, design and social context of health and welfare; examining the difference between our collective understanding of common good and personal wellbeing. The piece acts as a live and physical form of research, using the 1969 science fiction novel Macroscope by Piers Anthony as a fulcrum, the plot of which involves, among other things, an extension of the Peckham Experiment.  

Prosodic Breaker is the Second in a series of research events which will culminate in a moving-image installation, Correspondence O, at The South London Gallery in 2017, funded by the Wellcome Trust. The project takes as its starting point the history and social significance of  the Pioneer Centre, Peckham Experiment - a radical health centre built and established in the 1920s for the study and promulgation of wellness and collective health.

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Prosodic Breakers performed by:

Sarah Kent, Katie-Rose Spencer, Claudia Palazzo

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The Curl Of Their Acetone Tongue, Live performer: Gately Freeman, Audio voice over: Penelope Mcghie

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Photographs by Tinatin Shaburishvili, The Performance Studio

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