Attachments is a collaborative exploration by artists Abbye Churchill and Pablo Vindel in partnership with performers José Santiago Pérez and Udita Upadhyaya. The work examines the intersection of object-oriented ontology and human experience, focusing on the fluid relationship between body and material. Through a durational, improvisational performance, Attachments delves into themes of perception, transformation, and the mutable nature of meaning.

The performative process begins with the creation of three hand-crafted objects: two hand-blown glass vessels, an elongated terrycloth pillow, and a rope made from hand-twisted silk and horsehair, sealed with beeswax. The rope rests upon a sanded, kiln-dried mango crosscut, serving as both a material foundation and a conceptual threshold—subtly delineating the performance space. The artists also hand-dye the attire for their collaborators, grounding the work in personal intention.

As the project unfolds, Pérez and Upadhyaya enter a dreamlike state, encountering the objects without prior knowledge of them. Their interactions—spontaneous, intuitive, and unmediated—emerge organically, both individually and with one another. The rope is knotted, unraveled, tasted, and even swallowed. The glass vessels transform into masks: they are breathed through, shattered, discarded, reassembled, and reintroduced into the performance. The pillow, both boundary and connector, is cradled, bitten, licked, and torn apart.

Through these embodied encounters, the performance becomes a meditation on the malleability of perception and the porous nature of materiality. By stripping the objects of predefined meanings, the performance allows them to come alive through direct interaction. It challenges the boundaries between body and object, subject and material, inviting viewers to reconsider the object world as dynamic and responsive. In doing so, Attachments reflects on the transformative nature of our relationships with objects and spaces—their capacity to be reshaped and resignified through perception and lived experience.