FTHo

A page from The Body Event publication by David Toop.

The Body Event is a sound work for computer and voice made by David Toop in collaboration with John Latham in 2004. The resultant installation is made up entirely from Latham's speech, vocal sounds, pauses, breathing, actions, room sounds, and ambient sounds from the street, extracted from an interview with the artist in which he describes his theory of event structure and time-base. The fragments of speech and paralinguistic noise are configured according to certain principles of Latham's Theory and will be extruded through the house in the same way that Latham extruded books through glass in his work. 

The Body Event was originally presented during Latham's 2005 exhibition God is Great at Lisson Gallery, London. It will be reconfigured into a spatialised version for installation at the artist's home.

David Toop first met Latham as a student at Hornsey College of Art; Latham had been invited by students to screen his 16mm films Talk Mr Bard (1961) and Speak(1962) as part of the late-night film shows held during the 1968 sit-in. Toop was later in the audience of an event called Float, at Middle Earth, a psychedelic club in Covent Garden, again probably in 1968, with performances by artists, including Latham, Peter Kuttner, Stuart Brisley, Bruce Lacey, and Carlyle Reedy. Toop was most impressed by Latham’s performance, cutting up books with a floor mounted saw. A contact microphone amplified the already violent noise from the saw. Toop later joined the Artist Placement Group along with Latham, Barbara Steveni, Barry Flanagan, David Hall and others.