Medialab-Matadero Madrid
Common Body (pan-choreographic, pan-acoustic and the production of desire in postmodernism)
How are we transformed into walking logos, zombies and cyborgs? The neoliberal pan-acoustic and pan-choreographic are a group of mechanisms for the distribution of standard choreographies for the body: from the interface man-machine (HCI) we find in computers, cellphones, game consoles or mp3, to the ubiquitous and unregulated proliferation of images and sounds (advertisement, pornography, music videos, television, ubiquitous commercial, music…) and neuroeconomics.
Non-verbal communication, a specificity in body constitution and an instrument for the production of relational, social and specific bodies, has to be considered as a Commons implicit in the unprecedented process of erasing and standardizing through the global distribution of choreographies and standard architectures of corporality. In this silent mass-production of bodies relies the functioning of new fascisms, which are covered under “participatory democracies”.
The (common body), as a field of relational, emotional and wishing forces, is a spreading reality constantly produced within the framings of territory and divisions that rely on techno-aesthetic equipment proposing a reduction of the body to substance and to the private environment. This conception of the body is located at the ground of a series of structures regulating the social organism, which are reproduced in hegemonic cultural regulations through performance and meta-performance actions, camouflaged under the fictions of universalism, standardized, or hidden behind the fictions of democracy and citizenship, false participation and the “freedom” of leisure culture and global consumerism. Constitutive and regulatory processes of these and other categories should be considered as an implicit Commons and anti-Commons.
From a post- queer approach, the project will study how the subjects of gender, sexuality, class, race, disability, age and body shape are comprised through the technologies of the emotional production of the bodies. This project aims to offer a review of the obsolete anatomies in which audiovisual culture, as a device for power and control, is grounded. It also aims to study the alternatives for technological re-appropriation in the creation of a common relational body that is public, post- intimate, pan-generic and meta-sexual, which can also exceed given territorial regulations.
Objectives:
Mark the reach and significance of the notion of “common body”.
Identify current technologies that regulate/produce bodies as anti-commons starting from the notions of pan-choreography and post-global pan-acoustics
Identify/produce/re-appropriate technologies through which new forms of common body can be produced
Who is the audience?
Professionals and students from the fields of communication, arts (performance, dance, visual arts, music, architecture), academics, philosophers, neurologists, urban planners, social workers, activists and people with disabilities among others. Whoever is interested can attend.
Methodology
Periodic meetings, permanent work through email and other online platforms, as well as the relation to other projects from the Laboratory. Some intensive workshop sessions and at least one seminar with a guest speaker related to the themes developed in the workshop. Initial proposals are: Donna Haraway and Katherine Hayles. The work consists on theoretical and technological production inside and outside the digital arts sphere in relation to the re-appropriation of technologies of control.
Other related projects
The project is related to other projects from the Laboratory in many ways: From those that problematize around the death of the author, to those speaking about technological obsolescence, the question of archiving in television or the articulation of legal bodies and its categorizing. Reverso Projects http://www.reverso.org/Anticuerpos-DISOLUCION.htm and http://www.reverso.org/Anticuerpos-microdanzas.htm are directly related to the project´s proposal. This project re-appropriates surveillance cameras by attaching them to the body generating an amorphous and post-anatomical body.
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> Activites 2011
> Activities 2009-2010
> Taller I: Cuerpo Común - Society of Molecules. May 9 and 10, 2009. Call closed.
> Taller II: Convocatoria Proyecto ETP- European TelePlateaus. June 27 and 28, 2009. Call closed.
> Taller III: ETP- European TelePlateaus: PONG. 25 May, 2010.
> Taller IV: Cuerpos en red - ETP European Tele-plateaus. June 25, 26 and 27, 2010 in CaixaForum Madrid.