"Archives of the body"

Keywords: female body, standard of beauty, body positivity, body politics, reproductive rights, sexualization, cult of virginity, domestic violence, anti-pornography, queer bodies, women’s health and disabilities

research

"The body is the medium or raw material through which we navigate the world, but it is also an entity that is invested with meanings."
Mary Kosut and Lisa Jean Moore, The Body Reader
Why, when and how women body became a political-affective geography, a historically shaped archive, a both public and private space, where power is constantly contested and negotiated?
In this class, the female body will be addressed and interpreted through the lens of history and culture. Students will learn to use reflection of their own embodied experiences and examine some of the following topics:
  • Body & Consumer culture: "The Politics of Beauty", "Body Image and Fashion", "Pornography"
  • Body & Health, Aging, Dying, and Dead Bodies: "Disordered Bodies, Disordered Eating", "Cosmetic Surgery", "Athletic Bodies",  "Differently Abled (Dis-abled) Bodies",  "Illness"
  • Body & Social control: "Policing-Regulating-Dominating-Criminalizing- Punishing "other" bodies"
  • Sexualizing the Body: "Body, Gender, and Sex"

during the classes, activities will involve

  • Theory
Presentation, discussions (based on readings, life experience, self-examination), screenings and readings from texts by writers, theorists, artists...
  • Thematic experience
Ritual, ceremony, promenade, multi-sensorial experience, hiking...
  • Practice
Performance, dance, movement research, acting, puppet theater, narrating and composing through structured-improvisation and movement; developing scores for solo and group choreographies; creative writing in different form (poetry, manifest, comics, diary...) making exercises and creative tasks in different medium (drawing, paining, collage, video, photo, installation art, multimedia art...), searching through storytelling, personal narratives, historical material, archives and divers audiovisual resources...
  • Fieldwork
In collaboration with disabled people.

public showings

Students have regularly possibility to organize public presentations (performances, public space intervention...), showings (pop-up exhibitions, screenings, discussions, talks...), participative group experiences (ceremonies, rituals, promenades, celebrations...) and many other public forms to share their works, test their ideas, present their process.