For Tape Piece/ Birmingham Record Company

3 November 2020

“For the 17’52” duration of Tape Piece Maya Verlaak and Andy Ingamells can be heard wrapping rolls of sticky tape around each other’s clothed bodies and then, when all the tape has been used and after a brief pause, struggling to break free. The audio residue of their hectic physical entanglement is at once a blatant absurdity and a comic tour de force; a pun translated into slapstick action preserved on cassette, the action taped and the pun made literal. Broadly in the ebullient spirit of Fluxus, the couple’s tussle has its own obscure rhythms and binding, grappling, streching and ripping, its own clenched, involuted language of squeaks, tears and tugs, grunts, gasps and pauses for breath. Absurd, and curiously life-enhancing.”