Sweat drips out of every pore, tears swell up in the eyes, bleeding sets in. Without really being able to control it, fluids seep out of our body every day. Hardly anyone realizes that with each secretion, the body transfers information from its inside to the outside world, sending data through the thin membrane that separates the supposedly private from the public. Glandular releases signal we are inflamed or hyperacidic, insecure or anxious. In this sense, thus, secretion always reveals a secret.

Silent spills I is a “leaking” body in the broadest sense. In this live exhibition, choreographer and performance artist Deva Schubert draws our attention to the communicative and social phenomenon of gossip. A phenomenon that relies on permeable spots in the social fabric, where clandestine information seeps through and is passed on.

"Silent spills I asks who is allowed to speak, who is to be believed, and how knowledge circulates. Gossip is staged as a fleeting, polyphonic form of communication. The question here is how gossip can democratize information and counter-narratives and help to reassert everyday communication as a social force, especially for marginalized groups,” says the artist.

Gossip manifests as choreography in three performances and as installation in a multi-channel sound collage at the heart of the show. Through whispers and choral singing Schubert continues her long-standing exploration of the voice and engages with the question of “what remains when [the] body does not perform.”

With the image of the leaking body and her appropriation of gossip as an alternative form of communication, Schubert creates an artistic vision of publicness. While social media persistently sanitize social exchange, Silent spills I celebrates the porous and the messy.