Bodily experience

This article examines the conception of the everyday city as presented in the work of architect Christopher Alexander and architectural theorist Bill Hillier: Both thinkers suggest that, in the past, lively urban places arose unself-consciousty through the routine daily behaviors of many individual users coming together in supportive space and place. In different ways. both thinkers ask whether, today, a similar manner of vital urban district can be made to happen self-conscioustv through explicit understanding transformed into design and policy principles. The aim for both Alexander and Hillier is place-based urban communities marked by lively streets, serendipitous public encounters, and informal sociability. The article begins by examining commonalities and differences in Alexander and Hillier's conceptions of environmental wholeness and urban place. Next. the article considers implications for urban design and, last, indicates the considerable value that the two thinkers' ideas offer environmental philosophy, particularly for understanding environmental wholes.

Nach einer kurzen Erörterung der Frage, inwieweit Spektakel zur Populärkultur zu zählen seien, wird zentral das Thema der Gewinnung von Wissen bei der Rezeption von Spektakeln behandelt. Ästhetisches Erleben, so die These, ist wesentlich körperliches Erleben, und bezieht sich wesentlich auf körperlich-sinnliches Wissen. Spektakel als Unterhaltungsangebote werden nicht nur kognitiv-rational, sondern gleichermaßen sinnlich-affektiv angeeignet. Vor allem das bezeichnet "aisthesis" als sinnliche Erkenntnis.
Konkreter wird die These mit Intepretationen von Richard Dyer belegt, die die Effekte nicht-sprachlicher, nicht-begrifflicher Dimensionen von Filmen demonstrieren. Farben, Bewegungen, Rhythmen, Räume, Musik und Schauspieler*innen-Images wirken über affektive Codes auf bedeutungsgeladene Stimmungen hin - etwa auf die Erzeugung "utopischer" Energien.

Islamic calligraphy, whether written with a reed, painted with a brush, or laid as a mosaic, is of outstanding importance for Islam and for Muslim religious life and experience. Despite the fact that Arabic script conveys fundamental meaning, instant legibility is not at the centre of Islamic calligraphy. Rather, the calligraphy causes problems to the reader, whether learned or lay: It is hard to read. Sometimes it is barely legible. What is the point of a writing that can- not be read?, literary scholar Akane Kawakami asks, alluding to a quote from Roland Barthes. The latter’s answer would most likely be that with illegibility materiality comes to the fore (Kawakami 2011, 388). Materiality is undoubtedly of great importance when thinking about scripts. At least until the dawn of the digital age, writing always happened on something and was done with some- thing.1 Arabic script has a particularly close connection to materiality and things, given its fundamental role in Islamic art and applied writing of various kinds. This philosophical photo essay argues that, even so, the quasi illegibility of writing in Arabic does not shift attention away from what is written, nor does it focus merely on materiality. It holds that the hindered readability is neither a coincidence nor simply a result of artistic playfulness or pure love of fanciful ornamentation. By graphically coding the obvious way of reading, it opens up different forms of legibility, a legibility beyond words. And this would not be possible without one quintessential graphic element that determines Arabic script’s ability to be coded: the line.

"Representations", N. 129, Winter 2015.

The essay analyzes the project of maintaining the body of V. I. Lenin in the Mausoleum in Moscow for the past ninety years, focusing on the unique biological science that developed around this project, and the unexpected political role this body has performed.

Ce mémoire propose une analyse du discours et de l’expérience corporelle des adeptes de la scène musicale électronique underground-house de Montréal. Il cherche à contribuer au champ des études sur les formations culturelles expressives contemporaines sur deux axes. Sur le plan méthodologique, cette recherche illustre la portée de l’entretien d’explicitation lorsqu’il s’agit d’accompagner la mise en mots d’impressions sensorielles, d’émotions, de pensées ou d’actions. Combinée à une démarche immersive de longue haleine sur le terrain, cette méthode innovante développée par le chercheur Pierre Vermersch (1994) s’avère ici un outil rigoureux donnant accès à la mémoire incarnée des sujets, laquelle regorge d’informations d’une étonnante précision. Sur le plan ethnographique, cette étude s’intéresse aux nouveaux espaces de solidarité et d’expression balisant l’expérience des Québécois de parents haïtiens issus des classes moyenne et moyenne élevée. Les résultats de cette recherche démontrent, en premier lieu, que l’expérience de la « vibe », expression idiomatique largement utilisée par les acteurs, constitue la clé de voûte maintenant la cohésion entre les représentations, les croyances et les activités corporelles des participants. En deuxième lieu, la scène underground-house se présenterait comme l’expression d’une nouvelle contre-culture en établissant une distance critique avec, d’une part, la « culture hip hop » commerciale et sa représentation médiatique « ghettoïsée » et, d’autre part, l’espace culturel dominant en promouvant une expérience de corps et d’esprit subversive. Cet espace de transmission et de communion inédit propose des modèles de sociabilités nouveaux qui contribuent de manière inusuelle au dialogue interculturel urbain montréalais.

‘Landscape Transformations’ presents a critical investigation of the relationship between landscape planning/landscape architecture, current paradigms for planning, politics and society, and generative practice.
More specifically, the dissertation, on this background, unfolds a new landscape planning and design paradigm, which focusses on spatiality and the role of bodily and sensory awareness in both physical and abstract/conceptual space. Through this arises a dynamic view of what landscape is and how to work dynamically with planning and design, rather than focussing on functionality alone. This view is dependent on what is called ‘spatial event,’ which again is dependent upon the mutuality between how physical space is perceived and documented, and then conceived and worked with conceptually through production of data, text, charts, diagrams, drawings and models. This work process can be designated as a ‘conception operation’.
Most current methods used in landscape and city planning in Denmark are based on a Modernist view, resulting in a rational approach to planning and design that ignores the totality of our embeddedness in the landscape. The dissertation therefore discusses the Modernist focus on function, visual physicality and landscape as object, which has given rise to planning methods that usually depend upon defining zones of function or value that do not recognize, allow for or constructively utilize any ambiguity or overlap. The dissertation also points out that the dichotomies between subject/object, city/landscape, and culture/nature, among others, are no longer valid.

Conception operations open the door for rethinking landscape planning as an open-ended, dynamic set of related processes because, in each step, the operation mediates one specific process to the next in a unique way.
Such varied processes, such as sensing and experiencing the physical landscape through bodily motion, documenting what is sensed and experienced, and bringing forth what is conceived, through the use of diagrams and models, and re-applying this to the landscape, involve transformations of information and media in order to gain insight in both specific and general principles for how to develop the physical landscape.     
The dissertation seeks also to strengthen the architect’s role in physical planning and in society by ‘opening up’ how the architect/planner works, both in relation to the architectural profession itself and in relation to other actors, she/he co-operates with. Through increased insight into the architect’s/planner’s conception operations, it will be possible not only to de-mystify the generative aspects of architecture, but also to underline its own identity as a reflexive and generative meeting with the world. 

To create a language about generative processes, theories from the fields of philosophy and art are introduced and their terminologies adapted and expanded. Philippe Boudon’s work with the space of conception and conception operations, Robert Smithsin's Non-site Theory, Charles Peirce’s and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s diagram transformations and diagrammatic thinking, and Gernot Böhme’s work on bodily presence all have made it possible to create an unambiguous vocabulary. 
By elucidating the characteristics of generative processes through an in-depth investigation of workflow, it becomes apparent that the architect/planner cannot be seen as separate from any step leading to the production of a new conception, design or strategy for new landscapes. A central focus is then the personal role as participant in the transformation of physical landscapes; we are part of the construction of the world, we are in, which makes us a part of what must be observed and investigated. In this perspective, working as an architect and planner means that it is meaningful to observe and reflect on how you work. Neither can the researcher be seen as separate from her/his work. The dissertation is, therefore, both interested in and characterised by an awareness of different scales and reflective processes, which relationally affect the dissertation’s course of action, structure and form.  The form of the dissertation mirrors the form and activities of the research project. Both the written and graphic style of the dissertation and research project seek to strengthen conception and promote a dynamic view and conduct. The relationship between fieldwork and theory and between research project and dissertation are during the research period investigated through diagrams as tools of thought and reflection and through an open, essayistical written style. Existing graphic material is analysed and new graphic material is
generated, analysed and reworked in the research project. 

The dissertation as a whole makes explicit a set of problems and potentials in relation to the construction of landscapes. A dynamic view of how a landscape is constituted and planned arises from a new understanding of the relationship between an enhanced awareness of the spatial and bodily effects of landscapes and an enhanced awareness of how this experience is worked with in both a physical space and an abstract conception space. The experience of sensing in a physical landscape is translated and transformed by bringing this sensory awareness over into abstract space by unfolding bodily presence in abstract space. It becomes evident, by working reflexively in abstract space, that an architect/planner uses a spectrum of methods, including physicality, executive and creative processes and self-observation, as a general way of establishing knowledge in working with space for other people’s bodily presence. In that sense, this dissertation contributes with a deeper understanding of the generative how in architecture by qualifying the generative momentum of conception, and thereby strengthening its role and position in planning processes and practise.

The dissertation also develops a new sliding scale of spatial parameters that can be put to use in any relevant framework, be it on a governmental, regional, municipal or adviser level. This system puts into perspective how landscape planning legislation can and must be inclusive of spatial and bodily parameters. The concept of architectural quality can likewise be reconsidered in such a way that the emphasis naturally is moved away from issues of taste. It is of utmost importance for both architectural quality and the development of sustainable landscapes that we feel that we belong there, are rooted by our bodily presence, and responsible. By bringing this new paradigm into play, the future design and planning of landscapes will truly create landscapes for living.

This article examines the question of the researcher's bodily experience in the production of ethnographic knowledge, discussing fieldwork in the Brazilian Spiritualists Christian Order Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn). Focussing on spirit mediumship, it proposes a twofold analysis discerning local categories from those widely in use in other spiritual contexts and in the scholarly debates, and considering how they are articulated and lived through. Hence, it tackles questions such as how do mediums learn their practice? How do they discern between different categories of spirits? How does mediumistic experience inform notions of the body and the self? In doing so, it shifts the focus from belief to experience, including that of the researcher, as part of the ethnographic encounter. The process of learning spirit mediumship is hereby approached considering the cultivation of a mediumistic body as an intersubjective process of development of a specific mode of knowing, exploring how the cognitive, bodily and affective dimensions interweave. This kind of analysis demands a peculiar reflexive attention to the ethnographer's re-education of perception as a way of becoming skilled in local ways of knowing and communicating, producing common grounds of interaction in the field.

There has been much discussion about the sense of ownership recently. It is a very controversial topic and even minimal consensus seems hard to achieve. In this paper we attempt to assess the prospects of achieving a better understanding of what is meant by ‘sense of body ownership’. In order to do so, we begin by addressing an objection on which the notion itself might depend, coming from the distinction between ‘inflationary’ and ‘deflationary’ accounts of the sense of body ownership. Once the path is clear, we will consider some influential ways of approaching the issue, which propose grounding the sense of ownership in the spatiality of bodily sensations, the affective dimension of bodily experience, and in its spatial dimension, among other things. We expect the results of our discussion will allow us to both identify the strongest candidates for an account of the sense of body ownership and to determine the challenges that must be met by competing explanations.

This Introduction presents the main arguments debated in this Special Issue upon the construction of ethnographic knowledge in researching among participants of religious and spiritual groups through the lenses of bodily experience, addressing the empirical, ethical, epistemological, relational, political and analytical implications of this significant aspect of fieldwork. We ask specifically how does the ethnographer's experience of researching among these groups inform the production of ethnographic knowledge? In which way does it redefine our analytical categories, and the way we approach the experiences of participants in these groups? Up to which extent do our interlocutors expects us to know about their experiences and practices? When it comes to religious and spiritual experience these questions seem to enter an insidious territory challenging established categories, such as ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’, ‘body’, ‘self’ and ‘personhood’, ‘health’ and â€...

The paper examines viewer's perception of the fresco program in the ossuary of the Bachkovo monastery as a particular form of somatic experience.

Chapters:
1. Preparing to pass the threshold
2. Virtual experience of bodily resurrection
3. Upon leaving the ossuary

Social changes resulting a significant shift in philosophical thinking in the renaissance brought the idea of individuality to the forefront, radically changing the social requirements and desires of individuals, the ideas of freedom of all individuals collectively, their relations with society and their environments, and also their participation in urban life. As a result of the industrialization activities, wars and migrations experienced in the twentieth century, this direct participation of the individual in the urban space was negatively affected. Especially due to globalization, the changing physical appearance and quality of life of metropolitan cities have created disconnections in human interactions with the city and their bodily experience with the environment. Monetary system which has dominated urban life, has taken business life to the forefront separating the residential fabric from the zones where business life has developed, and accordingly lively streets have been surrendered to motor vehicles over time.
One of the social groups mostly affected by these changes, is the young generation-children. The sacrificed areas in the cities, where the scale has changed radically, were usually the recreational environments, and children's play areas. Within this context, it is also mentioned in the literature that adults (politicians, planners and municipalities) easily ignore the fact that cities are also for children; the developmental characteristics of young people, their needs for age, play and experience necessary for their healthy growths are ignored.
Therefore, it should be admitted that cities should have a lot to offer children. It is necessary to organize the streets, to plan the transit routes of motor vehicles, redefine new speed limits, and re-evaluate the streets to make them pedestrian-friendly again taking into account the possibility of danger to children. So, as a part of the theoretical background discussed in the context of environment and behavior theories, the debate covers how the urbanites, children in particular – very urbanite is considered as a body in this paper– are affected by the rapid change of urban space.
Also, through the introduction of global models such as woonerf and home zone on how the city can regulate physical and social components that can contribute both to the socialization of adults and to children’s development and freedom in relation to their own age and needs, a fruitful insight is endeavored to be provided to the potential for these kinds of practices to be implemented in metropolitan cities especially in the residential fabric.

The bodily senses–touch, taste, sight and smell–should be fully engaged throughout the process of both making and interacting with architecture and art.  Three works by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor reveal the generative role of the senses in poetically orchestrating light, space, form, color and tactile material properties.  Each exquisitely intertwines light and one primary material to great effect: wood in the Expo 2000 Swiss Pavilion, stone in the Vals Thermal Baths, and concrete in the Bruder Klaus Chapel.  Just as installation art engages a specific place in time, so too does the most provocative architecture.  Zumthor’s buildings support a human sensory connection to place and a deep awareness of time and material transformation through natural forces.

Though the importance of the senses in making may seem indisputable, current architectural design processes have become increasingly focused on visuality as the physical world is dematerialized by electronic media and appearance is often valued over existence.  This situation in architecture is not unique, however, for we all live in an increasingly visual and image-conscious culture.  Because architecture and art is disseminated and legitimated in 2D media, more architects and artists are concerned with creating work that will appear well in magazines than aim to support human occupation or engender sensory engagement.  Nevertheless, the essential power of touch, sound, and smell clearly persists.  Phenomenology, in its desire to restore the sensory plenitude of lived experience, has been revelatory for the disciplines of art and architecture.  Rooted in the ideas of Husserl, Heidegger and Bachelard, for example, Juhani Pallasmaa’s writing laments the loss of sensuality in culture and architecture. In The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, he describes the contemporary dominance of vision or ocularcentrism and argues that the senses are not independent, but interactive and synergetic.  From a related position, Zumthor articulates nine things in his creative process that produce a unified sensory approach.  He considers how human bodies find pleasure and protection in specific thermal conditions.  As Zumthor’s work eloquently exemplifies, the senses together spur enlightened reflection and amplify human experience of architecture and art.

This paper focuses on Deaf listening and more specifically on the involvement of the body in the Deaf musical experience. More precisely, it purposes to consider the sono-sensitive qualities of the body, from the Deaf experience, and by the investigation of a fundamental principle of the human experience: the ‘corpaurality’. On the other hand, they are the natural modalities of Deaf hearing that will be discussed here, modalities who, detached from the ordinary aural perceptions, position the body at the center of the musical experience.

La fenomenología participa de la construcción de lo visible, antes que la arquitectura la materialice en la visibilidad. Ambas disciplinas parten de una concepción común del lugar, del cuerpo, de la experiencia y de la percepción. En este contexto temático, el artículo analiza la constitución correlativa de espacio-cuerpo-lugar husserliana y la revisión ontológica de lo visible planteada por Merleau-Ponty. Aborda luego la ruptura con el paradigma de la composibilidad y la armonía, sugerida ya en sus escritos. Esta ruptura conlleva la transformación del sentido, que, estando ahora sujeto a un proceso de formación continua, se origina en la experiencia corporal-afectiva del lugar y es materializado en tanto evento por una arquitectura atópica que reconoce que nunca ha habido un cosmos sin fisuras.

In this article I will introduce a concept of empathetic listening and highlight some methodological considerations of the concept. The aim of my article is to bring the empathetic point of view alongside the analytical way of listening in order to study popular music singing. Almost all music listeners are able “to put their souls” into what they are listening to, but the awareness of this emotional or affective level of listening varies. The important questions here are: how to bring the affective and bodily aspects of listening into words so that this subjective level of music perception could be shared and discussed in more details; and how the bodily based nuances of a singing voice act as a part of meaning formation in an listening event? The starting point of my approach is phenomenological. I also use methods from phonetics and vocology to bring the physiological body alongside the experiential body in this observation.

This Introduction presents the main arguments debated in this Special Issue upon the construction of ethnographic knowledge in researching among participants of religious and spiritual groups through the lenses of bodily experience, addressing the empirical, ethical, epistemological, relational, political and analytical implications of this significant aspect of fieldwork. We ask specifically how does the ethnographer's experience of researching among these groups inform the production of ethnographic knowledge? In which way does it redefine our analytical categories, and the way we approach the experiences of participants in these groups? Up to which extent do our interlocutors expect us to know about their experiences and practices? When it comes to religious and spiritual experience these questions seem to enter an insidious territory challenging established categories, such as ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’, ‘body’, ‘self’ and ‘personhood’, ‘health’ and ‘illness’; categories which...

Architectural studio courses are structured for students to comprehend an existing urban fabric with its physical and social components for the purpose of solving a specific design. In this context, as students develop their conceptual ideas, they are also expected to assume probable interactions that are supposed to occur between users and space. However, students often face with difficulties in embracing the space with its psychological, social and sensual dimensions and occasionally ignore these unseen parameters of space such as spatial perception, user needs, privacy, user satisfaction, and etc. In this regard, elective courses become essential in supporting the student's interdisciplinary comprehension of space. An elective course titled Spatial Perception and Cognition is structured with this intention to support the student’s interdisciplinary understanding of space both in theoretical and kinesthetic means. Thus, in the context of the course, the concept of space is not...

Bodily and emotional activation in front of pain have been connected with the wish to help the other. Basing on previous researches of neuro-aesthetics, and on the concept of Aesthetic Relational Knowledge inside the frame of Gestalt therapy, the research has inquired on the reactions of 29 individuals in front of images of pain and neutral feelings, in artistic representations and in photos of actors. The individuals were tested with SCL-90-R, MAIA and IRI. The results confirm the hypothesis that the wish to help relates to bodily-emotional activation, with the capacity to feel one’s own body and yet hold the emotion of the other. Bodily-emotional activation was shown only in artistic representation of pain. A possible explanation is that the “movement” that activates a person in front of the pain is better expressed in artistic images. At the same time, the wish to help relates to the capacity to de-centralize from oneself and focus on the other. Lack of empathy is not connected with avoidance to help the other. Lack of empathy and wish to avoid helping has shown to relate to a feeling of anxiety and mistrust in coping, rather than with lack of empathy.

This paper explores the process of mediumistic development in the Brazilian Spiritualist Christian Order Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn) drawing on ethnographic research in temples in Brazil and Europe. This process is described by mediums as being culturally shaped according to the purposes for which it is used. Since mediumistic practice in the Vale do Amanhecer is aimed at releasing discarnate spirits obsessing humans – that is, 'disobsessive healing' – these spirits need to be discerned from the medium and the spirit guides, and controlled during a semiconscious trance. Control and discernment are skills to be learned; and emotions, feelings and bodily experience play a pivotal role in this process. In illustrating the different modes of discernment as culturally informed, the discussion addresses specific notions of the self as produced through the bodily and affective dimensions of this process, and how these embodied notions, in turn, inform therapeutic experiences.

Despite their differences, body schema and the body image representations are not only consistent in everyday life, but also sometimes consistent in pathological disorders, such as in Alice in Wonderland syndrome and anorexia nervosa. The challenge is to understand how they achieve such consistency. Recently, we suggested that these two representations were co-constructed (Pitron & Vignemont, 2017). In his reply, Gadsby (2018) invited us to clarify how this co-construction works and to what extent the body schema and the body image can reshape each other. Here we motivate conceptual grounds for a model on which these two forms of representation modify one another and explore theoretical options for the way(s) in which they might do so. In particular, we highlight the virtues of a serial model in which the body schema has some primacy over the body image, while also acknowledging the special role played by the body image. 2. How malleable are long-term representations of the body? Most of us are born with two arms and two legs. If everything goes well, we still have them when we are eighty-years old. Once we reach adulthood, the size of our limbs also barely changes. Body configuration and body metrics thus qualify as being long-term properties of the body, in so far as they are relatively invariant properties of the body. The question is: what kind of representation

A testiség újra felfedezésének kiemelkedő eredményei közé sorolható az a felfogás, amely szerint a tapintás és a testérzetek meghatározó szerepet játszanak az „Én” érzetének és képzetének a kialakulásában és fenntartásában. Ehhez kapcsolódik, hogy a Buddha által feltalált éberség-belátás (szatipatthána-vipasszaná) meditáció során egy sajátos új test-élmény, a viszcerális koherencia jön létre, ami által voltaképpen egy újfajta személyiség születik. Ennek a folyamatnak a mélyebb megértése érdekében az írás áttekinti a nyugati tudományos és filozófiai felfogásokat a mindennapi testérzetekről, a szomatikus illúziók és hallucinációk rendellenességeiről, a testi élmények, az érzékelés, a mozgás és az affektusok összehangolásáról, valamint a személy kohéziójáról (testséma, testkép, megtestesültség, kinesztetikus tudat, test emlékezet és a test narratívái). Végül külön rész foglalkozik a személyiség koherenciáját Nyugaton oly jellemzően geometriai szemlélettel leíró nézetekkel. Figyelemre méltó, hogy Gilles Deleuze filozófiai nézőpontja számos lényegi ponton egyezést mutat a viszcerális koherencia meditatív élményével.

"This article examines pregnancy as a dyadic body-project within surrogate motherhood arrangements. In gestational surrogacy arrangements, the surrogate mother agrees to have an embryo that has been created using IVF, with the genetic materials of the intended parents or of anonymous donors, surgically implanted in her womb. Based on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish-Israeli surrogates and intended mothers involved in these arrangements, this article focuses upon the interactive identity management practices that the women jointly undertake during the pregnancy. For each side, creating an unambiguous definition of motherhood was central to their individual identity-work. For surrogates, the possible imputations of immorality required redefining pregnant embodiment as separate from maternal identity, while for intended mothers, the surrogate’s embodiment of the pregnancy represented competing claims to their own maternity. Through verbal communication and through practices of disembodiment and vicarious embodiment, the women construct a ‘shifting body’ which they use to designate the social label of pregnancy, identity-building processes associated with pregnant embodiment, and even the lived experience of pregnancy. This example of a dyadic body-project contributes to the existing scholarship on the role of the body in the management of identity. While previous works have examined projects of the body as individualistic pursuits, the shifting body exemplifies that body-projects can be collaborative, dual forms of identity-work and that pregnancy can be the site of these projects.

Key Words: embodiment • medical anthropology • motherhood • pregnancy • reproduction"

Architectural studio courses are structured for students to comprehend an existing urban fabric with its physical and social components for the purpose of solving a specific design. In this context, as students develop their conceptual ideas, they are also expected to assume probable interactions that are supposed to occur between users and space. However, students often face with difficulties in embracing the space with its psychological, social, and sensual dimensions and occasionally ignore these unseen parameters of space such as spatial perception, user needs, privacy, user satisfaction, and etc. In this regard, elective courses become essential in supporting the student's interdisciplinary comprehension of space. An elective course titled Spatial Perception and Cognition is structured with this intention to support the student’s interdisciplinary understanding of space both in theoretical and kinesthetic means. Thus, in the context of the course, the concept of space is not only introduced through theoretical seminars, but also through an experiential participation of the students themselves where they can actively perform daily activities by the guidance of a blind guide, in Dialog in the Dark which is a thematic dark environment where students experience various urban nodes through scent, sound, wind and texture. Upon completion of the experience, students are invited to a cognitive mapping session through which they reflected their spatial experiences grasped via their senses. In conclusion, cognitive maps show that when eyesight is eliminated, other senses also play a very important role in comprehending the sensual and psychological characteristics of space.

Architectural knowledge has a dynamic character and can be discovered collectively during architectural education. The place of this discovery and production process can be considered as the “studio” and this studio doesn’t have to be limited in a building. To extend the limits of the studio to city scale creates new opportunities both for the students and the locals. Visiting different parts of the city and converting those places into a studio triggers encounters. Every encounter is a creative and productive act. As a course of its nature, the city is the place of confrontations and encounters. Being, producing and discussing in the city creates an atmosphere where intellectual, imaginative and creative encounters emerge. This emergence can be considered as a flash- mob. Flash-mobs demonstrate the power of bodily experience and highlights the importance of performativity. Each student constructs a mental and muscle memory by his/her own bodily experience during the studio hours in the city. This experience let us to create an extra curriculum such as historical, socio- economical, natural and cultural aspects and everyday life practices of the place. In this paper, I would like to discuss my way of teaching as a retroactive research. I prefer to use the city – Istanbul – as a studio and visit different parts of it for my courses. In this way, an architectural course turns into a retroactive research based on bodily experience. Each event of perception opens up to its own world and the world of perception is merged with the real world itself. When you use the city as a studio, the dynamic character of architectural knowledge unfolds itself and extends its content. In this critical pedagogy, architectural education becomes interactive between the city users and the students and transforms both of them.

Le transhumanisme voudrait en finir avec la faiblesse et la fragilité du corps et, dans certaines de ses versions, abolir toute frontière entre la machine et le vivant. Comment redécouvrir le sens de notre corporéité ? Que nous enseigne à ce sujet le mystère de l’Incarnation rédemptrice ?

THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES attitudes to and perceptions of the body in 7th-century England. By the late-Saxon period, textual sources indicate a growing fear of the grave and the horrors of bodily decay. This paper traces the concern of bodily corruption back to an earlier period. From the 7th century, ecclesiastical texts and judicial law indicate that the body became increasingly under physical and spiritual siege. Yet, there is a striking contrast between these developments and the contemporary emergence of full-bodied human forms and a shift in the types of objects carrying human motifs: items associated with the
curation and preservation of the body. The developments in art and concerns about bodily corruption were part of a wider reconceptualising of the body as a subject, emphasising bodily integrity in a rapidly
changing society.

For PDF copy see: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/RHEPK4FGGCSECZNNVTWQ/full?target=10.1080/00766097.2020.1835270

Brundle, L., 2020. Exposed and Concealed Bodies: Exploring the Body as Subject in Metalwork and Text in 7th-Century Anglo-Saxon England. Medieval Archaeology, 64(2), pp.193-225.

Nowadays music is no longer exclusively a performative art: as in the case of electronic music, it can also be produced completely by means of technology, without the live bodily action of an instrumentalist. With respect to this aesthetic paradigm, the Italian composer Dario Buccino (Rome, 1968) does exactly the opposite, creating a type of music which is even hyper-performative, in that it increases the requirements regarding the performing subject's awareness and free intentionality to the highest degree, and minimizes (human) automaticity. To this end, he has developed an original notation system (with many graphical ad hoc solutions), in which musical symbols are integrated with indications about the performer's proprioceptive attitude and physical actions (which are often akin to those in experimental theatre, dance, and body art), and above all with many indications about the experiences one has to have while playing. Buccino goes beyond the approaches of Karlheinz Stockhausen's “intuitive music” (circa 1968-70), Dieter Schnebel's Maulwerke (1968-74), Helmut Lachenmann's “musique concrète instrumentale” , and Brian Ferneyhough's extreme demand for effort. He radicalises an approach which is instead typical of other musical genres, where at every level form arises in composition (often extemporaneous) from the singular physical relationship between the interpreter and his or her instrument.

The present diagnosis of the bodily identity of a contemporary man is discussed in the philosophical and cultural perspective. The author of the paper analyses symptoms of various relationships and attitudes of the modern man to his or her own body. She refers to several influential thinkers, like H Plessner, A. Jones, J.-F. Lyotard, as well as to the popular artifacts and controversial issues of modern medicine. To capture the typical relationships between “my body” and “I” one has to distinguish three main understandings of the concept of “my body”: 1) body as the material which can, or should, be consciously and intentionally modified, improved etc. (“my body” is external to “I” and mastered by “me”); 2) body as the passive substratum of the experience, as the source of pleasure, joy, pain or any other sensation (“my body” does not differ from “me”); 3) body as its image, that is the virtual after-sight of the particular body and individual sensuality (“my body” is what is perceived to be “my body”). In her essay, the author does not confines herself to commenting on the phenomena of the contemporary Western culture but also refers to some Oriental philosophical ideas of bodily identity which have been gaining the increasing popularity in Europe and United States since the early 60s."

Within academic literature female bodybuilding has primarily been praised as a form of feminist resistance to traditional ideals of femininity. Women’s bodybuilding can be seen as a way to create ‘gender trouble’, as the hyper-muscular female body expresses a subversion of dominant gender norms. Others have, however, wondered whether and to what extent one can speak of such feminist resistance. After all, female bodybuilders seem willing to mimic and almost exaggerate traditional requirements of feminine iconography. Previous research thus considered the practice of women’s bodybuilding from normative forms of discourse. These interpretations render these women as passive rather than active agents within dynamic social processes, in which the individual and practical embodied experience are often forgotten. Interviews lend themselves pre-eminently to accessing embodied agents. By interviewing seven women who participated in bodybuilding in the eighties, the article attempts to bridge the gap between academic discourse and materiality in the study of these female bodybuilding bodies. In the experience of embodied practice, the concept of ‘feminist resistance’ was renounced. These women constructed an identity of femininity, contrasted with masculinity, and testified that gender should be worked at through performance. And although many elements within literature on ‘feminine recuperation’ were confirmed through the interviews, greater complexity was uncovered in the experienced reality. Through bodybuilding these women were provided with strength, confidence as well as being able to create an identity for themselves, incorporating traditional male characteristics. Female bodybuilding therefore contains a liberating potential on the level of personal experience, distinguished from the concept of ‘feminist resistance’ within literature.

This chapter addresses the question of researching a particular kind of religious experience that arises from phenomena of spirit mediumship and possession. It discusses the implications of the ethnographic method, tackling particularly the engagement of the researcher’s body in the field as a methodological tool for approaching a practice that is grounded in embodied forms of encounter with the sacred. The mediums’ relationship with the sacred is hereby considered as something lived through on a bodily, sensorial and emotional dimension. The discussion draws upon the author’s fieldwork in the Spiritualist Christian Order Vale do Amanhecer in Brazil.