The Mutables
What is said cannot be unsaid. What is unspoken is alluded to, wrapped in metaphor, layered in allegory, gestured at. What is gestured at, is not silence.
THE MUTABLES weaves cutting edge technology for speech production with mythographies of the feminine monstrous to expand and reorient our intuitions for what can be put into words. Using a unique sensor-based instrument for embodied speech called BodyMouth, this eerie performance intertwines bodies and vocals as dancers sound out words phoneme-by-phoneme by enacting specific gestures in sequence, turning the body quite literally into a mouth. Situated at the edge of experimental opera and dance, the piece is inspired by female forest creatures in Balkan folklore called ielele whose voices were said to lead men astray and who could render listeners instantly mute. The project is a meditation on the question What does it mean to have a voice?—a provocation to the bleak histories of totalitarian rule where alternate modes of speech became an urgent form of survival and resistance.
Location: Mainstage at HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY
Performances:
October 8, 2025 at 8:30pm
October 9, 2025 at 8:30pm
October 10, 2025 at 8:30pm
October 11, 2025 at 8:30pm
October 12, 2025 at 8:30pm
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kat Mustatea is a transmedia playwright and artist whose experiments with language, live art, and the computational uncanny, articulate the absurdities of being human in an increasingly algorithmic world. Her work has been presented at a variety of venues, including New York Live Arts (NY), Roulette (NY), The Cube at Virginia Tech (VA), The Ferst Center (GA), Ars Electronica (AT), New Images Festival (FR), and CPH:DOX (DK), among others. Her project BodyMouth, an instrument for embodied speech, was a finalist for the Lumen Prize and the Guthman Prize, and was featured nationally on CBS Sunday Morning, Harper’s Magazine, and Gizmodo. She heads EdgeCut Arts (edgecut.org), a curatorial experiment at the intersection of performance and digital culture, which also includes Edge Space, a space co-op for live performance in SoHo, New York City.