BODIES in PROGRESS trailer

Martina Hajdyla Lacová
Bodies in Progress

“Once a woman becomes aware of conception, she ceases to be an individual and instead becomes an inhabited multiplicity.”
Joan Raphael-Leff

Every movement reflected a dialogue between someone and something yet to come, while simultaneously saying farewell to someone we once were. A complex dynamic of bold and sensitive interactions unfolded within a shared space inhabited at once by past and future.

What impact did the experience of shared existence have on a woman?
And how was the body inhabited throughout this process?

We all began life within the body of another human being—immersed in a system of exchange, absorbing nutrients from the mother’s body as well as hormonal derivatives of emotions, while simultaneously excreting our biological waste through her bodily openings. In the words of psychoanalyst Joan Raphael-Leff, this fundamental experience of intercorporeality, in which the “I” and the “not-I” exist in connection, opened space for a deep reflection on how our earliest connections shaped our entire lives.

Bodies in Progress was presented exclusively between April and July 2024, corresponding to the 22nd to the 38th week of Martina Hajdyla Lacová’s pregnancy. Each performance was therefore a singular, unrepeatable event.