Do07.11.2418:00
Vortrag Uferstudios

Body Concepts

Inclined Bodies

The Body Concepts series is based on the principle of transdisciplinary encounters. The session begins with a lecture by Adriana Cavarero, followed by a dialogue with artist Jeremy Wade.

LECTURE BY ADRIANA CAVARERO: The fact that humans walk upright contains an implicit geometry, supposedly immediate and natural, that is organized according to dimensions, lines, locations, and topologies which are, in turn, defined with reference to the absolute orientation of corporeal verticality. The famous drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, the Vitruvian Man, representing a nude man in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and inscribed in both a circle and a square, is constructed on the vertical posture. Verticality works here and in the entire tradition as a norm of the ‘right’ human body assumed as a model of ‘rectitude’.

In the metaphor of the body politic, politics models itself on the human body’s organization, anatomy, physiology and posture, giving the ‘head’ power and command. But what happens if we explore a different imaginary in which the body, deviating from the vertical axis, loses balance and control? The canon of verticality, metaphorized as an upright body whose parts are hierarchically controlled by the head, will be replaced by the choreography of inclined bodies whose variable connections entail dependencies and imbalances. The rigid figure of an autonomous and self-standing subject will be replaced by the unexpected dynamic of relational subjectivities.

 

Link for livestream. Free admission. In English.

ADRIANA CAVARERO is an Italian philosopher and Honorary Professor at the University of Verona. Her writings focus on ancient philosophy, political theory, feminism and literature. Among her books: Stately Bodies. Literature, Philosophy and the Question of Gender (Michigan U.P, 2002); Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence (Columbia U.P., 2009); Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude (Stanford U.P., 2016); Surging Democracy. Notes on Hannah Arendt’s Political Thought (Stanford U.P. 2021).
 
Disruption, Excess, Hyper Vulnerability – JEREMY WADE is an extreme performer and performance maker. His works, also incorporating teaching, curation and social practice, are disturbing, thought-provoking and celebrated. They revolve around queer and feminist strategies of world making, the relational ethics of care, and grasping the violence that social norms cause on bodies of difference.

Veranstaltungsort: Uferstudios | Studio 11 | Uferstr. 23 | 13357Berlin
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