Body and Space

The disputable issues encircling the representation of the female body in contemporary art are inextricably linked with the phenomenon of sexual objectification, which primarily represents the subject as an object of desire and plays a significant role in gender disparity and violence. In 1998, Vanessa Beecroft exhibited one of her controversial VB performances entitled VB35, also known as Show, at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The contemporary artist displayed high-heeled doppelgänger-looking female models under the domed rotunda of the museum, either in lingerie or nude, to her spectators juxtaposed around the cylindrical ramp of the building. Positioned in space and obsessively controlled, the body displayed as tableaux-vivants in the performance correlates with several requisite subjects of the contemporary debate, including sexual objectification and the concept of the gaze. Based on Beecroft’s allegedly feminist perspective and VB35 performance, I discuss the artist’s representation of the female body as an immobile object of desire adopting a Mulveyian framework. I support my argument by analyzing two art critics’ articles on VB35 to explore the museum’s contribution to objectification with its spatial settings and the aura of consecration. Notwithstanding the initial idea of Beecroft’s use of the female body to criticize consumer society and ‘challenge the gaze of male’ in her performances, I question the inevitable paradox and jeopardy of commodification when the female body is exposed to the eyes of the beholder as an image to be looked at, especially in sexualized outfits. Although it has been more than twenty years since the artist tabled her subjects to the appetite of viewers, a critical concern remains to-date: How is it possible to expostulate the consumption of the female body by doing the very same while opposing the issue?

Die Schulbank des 19. Jahrhunderts – als in Reihen aufgestellte und fix mit dem Pult verbundene Sitzgelegenheit – wurde als technischer Apparat gesehen, um den Körper zu formen, und über den Körper auch den Geist. Die Schulbank ist damit der Kern, der Kristallisationspunkt einer disziplinierenden Schularchitektur.

This essay outlines the rise and fall of the school desk as a discursive idea. The belief in the school bench and the immobile student body arose from a superimposition of a number of discourses and practices: the unification of nation states, the emergence of industrialized mass-production, the idea of the norm, etc. In this discursive overlap, alternative models could hardly be formulated, indeed not even considered as a possibility. The discourse limited both the questions and the answers. As a result, the school building became much more than just a place where knowledge was transmitted. It mutated into a place for moral instruction, classification, separation and hierarchization. In a certain sense, the school can be seen as a microcosm of society, and in turn the school bench as a crystallization of the ideology of school in particular and of the disciplinary society as a whole.

In this paper, I am interested in the dialectical tension between the everyday and the extraordinary that is central to the spatiality of theatre and architecture. Both practices are grounded in everyday spatiality – involving bodies, social encounter, things, physical space – which they seek to sustain and transcend at the same time in artistic practice. Both seek to coax out their own ‘exceptional’ from the soil of the everyday. As spatial theorist Henri Lefebvre says, ‘it is in everyday life and starting from everyday life that genuine creations are achieved’ (2002, p. 44). This tension is most relevant to the production of spaces where theatrical works are incubated and produced. I approach the tension as playing out in contradictions between multiple Lefebvrian productions of space (1991) through a case study of TCT’s residency near Mumbai. Methodologically, a focus on contradictions between architectural and theatrical productions of space (in the context of those related to everyday life as well the broader political economy) allows me to approach them together fruitfully. Contrary to expectation, theatre is revealed to be a practice that produces, not just occupies, space at different scales. Architecture, on the other hand is temporalized; rather than the conventionally static end-state of design, it is revealed as a generative but pliable iteration within the process of making a place for ‘producing’ theatre. Everyday life, creative work, and performance are seen to be entangled with, and driving, the endless spatio-temporal dialectic to which architecture is a constantly performed response, and not a final solution.

Die Schulbank ist das Kernstück einer Architektur, die zum Ziel hat, den Schülerkörper zu disziplinieren. In der Schulbank manifestiert sich ein streng mechanistisches Körperbild; der Körper und der ihm innewohnende Geist des Schülers sollen durch Apparat und Architektur geformt werden.

Space form the core of architecture. In order to design, it is necessary to conceive and think about architectural space by decoding the characteristics of its nature and discovering messages revealed by the built form. It is the way how an architect becomes aware of the spaces that surround him/her. This kind of awareness helps architects to decide on the principles and concepts of his/her desired space. Critical questions arise at this point: How do architects understand and decode space? How do they think and talk about space?

The aim of this paper is to create a debate with an emphasis on these essential questions which are discussed in the first lecture of an elective course, namely, Architectural Morphology at the undergraduate level, in Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Architecture. Student profiles of this research are formed within the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 academic years. Students are asked to describe and talk about their living spaces by using their own architectural background without being lectured in any form. They are expected to record their mental processes and clarify the characteristic elements of their languages they use. By identifying personal and general expressions, it is attempted to decode the elements of the designers’ way of thinking and to describe how it is possible to transform their mental processes, from abstract forms into concrete expressions. In the last part of the study, contribution of space syntax to form a language for thinking and talking about space is discussed.

Precedendo di qualche giorno la presentazione di Context, a FITS SibFest in Romania, (https://www.sibfest.ro/ro/events/context-solo) ho pensato di presentarvi la mia intervista ad Alessandro Carboni. L'intervista risale all'estate scorsa quando, durante l'edizione del Festival Kilowatt "Questa Fervida Pazienza" svoltasi a Sansepolcro, Alessandro Carboni ha presentato, in prima nazionale, le tre creazioni performative: CONTEXT/trio, CONTEXT/duo, CONTEXT/solo e per la prima volta anche CONTEXT / visual, una mostra ad ingresso gratuito, localizzata, per quella occasione, nell'intimo Oratorio di Santa Maria delle Grazie a Sansepolcro. Nella mostra sono stati esposti i disegni ed i materiali preparatori, di studio, ricerca ed approfondimento utili a comprendere meglio gli spazi di interesse di CONTEXT: disegni dei corpi in movimento, misurazioni, mappe territoriali, pezzi di minerali e roccia. Materiali che hanno avvicinato i visitatori ed il pubblico alla complessità dell'intero processo di ricerca presentato dall'artista. Tutte e tre le performance presentate, fruibili anche separatamente, e gli oggetti esposti nella mostra, incarnano da punti di vista diversi l'intero processo di ricerca. Segue l'interessante dialogo che ho avuto il piacere di scambiare con l'artista. Claudia Roselli: Alessandro grazie per aver accettato di fare questa intervista. Puoi presentarti come Alessandro Carboni: performer, artista, artista visuale, ricercatore? Alessandro Carboni: Negli anni ho cercato di ridurre alla parola artista la definizione di quello che faccio. Perché, coltivando vari ambiti, in vari interessi ed in varie discipline i progetti che ho portato avanti hanno veramente attraversato l'arte contemporanea. E' emersa l'esigenza di racchiudere in una sola parola, ovvero "artista visivo", quello che faccio, anche perché più ampia in possibilità. Perché pur attraversando il corpo, la performance, la cartografia, oppure l'architettura, il corpo, eccetera, io ho sempre comunque lavorato a partire dall'idea visiva: anche nel movimento, anche nella coreografia. Quindi questa è la motivazione per la quale preferisco utilizzare la parola artista visivo. Mi pare la definizione più giusta, perchè il filo che ha unito tutte queste pratiche negli anni è stata questa forte relazione con il disegno. Il disegno come idea, come transfer visivo di un pensiero, ma anche disegno come azione, disegno come traccia, disegno come cartografia anche dell'anima.

"Being, Vitruvian" is the catalog accompanying the first of two exhibitions encompassing the visual narrative of Daniela Bertol’s creative research "Form Mind Body Space Time." In "Being, Vitruvian" practices of ‘making’ intersect practices of ‘moving’ and "Form Mind Body Space Time" is an interdisciplinary approach to the art and science of human movement: ‘making movement’ is inspired by geometric configurations which are also archetypical shapes and symbols in several cultures and are deeply embedded in the human psyche.

A multimedia interactive version is available from https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/being-vitruvian/id1439489651?mt=11

ABSTRACT

Today’s positive office interior strives for individualism, openness and spatial inclusivity. Workplace environments have changed along with the evolution of business and industry – demand and supply. Today we see open plan, company and product specific, cleverly designed and communicated office and workspaces. Arriving at an innovative, fun, bright, smart and well-organised office as an employee, director, client, supplier, cleaner, caterer or courier should be a welcoming, exciting and memorable experience.

Design can make or break the workplace environment, reputation and productivity. Wellbeing and consequent effort of the people occupying the office space goes naturally hand in hand. Including practical scenarios on a holistic level will lead to an enjoyable, interesting and productive space. Juxtapositions between informal and formal office environments, adventurous spatial topography and spaces within spaces; hubs, pods, pockets, boxes and even sleeping or power napping areas are becoming more and more common..


The buildings covered are:

Kashiwa-no-ha Open Innovation Lab / Naruse Inokuma Architects 2014 Chiba, Japan, New Soundcloud Headquarters / KINZO Berlin, 1305 Studio Office / 1305 Studio 2014 Shanghai, China, Lowe Campbell Ewald Headquarters / Neumann Smith Architecture 2014 Detroit, MI, USA, Airbnb’s Globetrotting Dublin Office / Heneghan Peng Architects 2014 Dublin, Ireland, IBC Innovation Factory / Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects 2012 Denmark, Factoría Cultural Matadero / Office for Strategic Spaces, Madrid, 2014, Crosswater HQ / Threefold Architects and CDLE Office / R-Zero.

In this essay, I try to point out how Thierry De Mey's films (including his collaborations with choreographers such as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker) construct a poetic vision of the world in which bodies and spaces closely interact and entwine. Indeed, De Mey's screendances always pay close attention to how dancing bodies inhabit and are intimately related to the various environments in which the film medium allows them to be immersed and to evolve. This is one of the most fruitful possibilities that the site of screendance opens up to the choreographic art: a strategy of "deterritorialization" that provides alternative settings to a stage, including complex milieus that can induce new kinesthetic qualities and original corporeal states. De Mey's films take maximum advantage of this possibility, which explains why the location is paramount in them. His film locations are always carefully chosen for their poetic and aesthetic characteristics that echo, or more often further or even renew, those of the dance by giving the movements a new universe and hence new qualities, significance, and connotations.
The natural environments or architectural sets in his films are not, therefore, shot as mere backgrounds. De Mey is concerned with capturing the relationship between locations and bodies, between spaces and beings: the environments he chooses often appear to alter dance movements and bodily states so much that they create unprecedented choreographic qualities that could not be achieved in the flat, geometrical stage context, which is at once spectacular and neutral (plain and featureless). Reciprocally, dancing bodies in his screendances are shown to affect their environments in visual, haptic, and aural capacities, sometimes to such an extent that they modify or reshape them. These close, mutual interactions between dancing bodies and their spaces of perception and action evidently call for a phenomenological reading: more particularly, I will argue that De Mey's screendances represent poetic illustrations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theories of the body as open to the world (or to its environment), being both receptive and responsive to it, impacting on it and influenced by it. Ultimately, I will examine how this induces the highly sensory and embodied qualities of De Mey's cinema.

Architecture 1 A

PROJECT 1, 2, and 3
Architecture is a concrete thing made with physical materials and yet it also produces a non-material void or series of voids, and we call this phenomenon – architectural space. Space is the part that is inhabited by people, in which individuals can exist or just be, and in which all the human action and drama take place (no matter how public, private, intimate or secret).

Architecture 1A explores space and matter. Project 1 (Esquisse) addresses this through learning about the spatial body. Project 2 is a temporary dwelling for three individual persons. A series of tasks develop a design method from the inside outwards, related to spatial relations, ritual, and massing. It culminates in the animation of the wall with openings and fenestration. Project 3 begins with the wall but explored as an ordering mechanism on a public site and urban space. The ceremony and ritual related to the public wall both returns the project to the people and transforms it from the individual to the collective.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the theatre as an architecture learning strategy in Basic Design Education. Hence, the study examines the art as a tool in Basic Design Education through the concept of the " body " , which is the common point of Architecture and Theatre discipline. Human being has used different ways to transfer feelings and thoughts. Theater is one of them. Theatre is staged feelings and thoughts through with space and body, by different topics and event patterns. The body becomes physical reflection of the soul and space accompanies to it. As Merleau-Ponty (2005) explains: " The human is not a body and a soul, it is a soul with a body. We able to access our outside of every asset if and only can access through our body; our outside of every asset becomes a mixture of soul and body with assumes the characteristics of human. " In this way, the soul and space are integrated. Body movements draw boundaries of space and also space draws the boundaries of the body. Body and space become complement and provision to each other. Architectural design activities are founded on " body and space " which are two basic elements. In the context of body and space relationship; a different training method was tested together with performance art that is " theater " and building art that is " architecture " over Basic Design Education. Transferring of the human body to a designed structure has been revealed by direct and (or) indirect way.

This study aims to trace points of intersection between the too often divorced disciplines of literature, continental philosophy, and the hard sciences in Angela Carter’s  “The Lady of the House of Love.” In short, this thesis will not only explore how such conversations surface within the short story, but will also serve as an explication of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of body and space, and the theory of epigenetics. Through these explications, the thesis itself will also gear one discipline towards the other as both theories intimately bind the environment with the body, and the body with the environment. Thus, the body and the environment are not separate and passive, but active and intertwined in a manner much like the aforementioned disciplines I posit are. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to first postulate that such conversations between literature, philosophy, and science are already occurring, and as such, stress that such conversations need further discussion and exploration.

Com o objectivo de trabalho na dissertação em que pretendo perceber que contributos e problemáticas nos podem oferecer os discursos tecnológicos contemporâneos no âmbito das ciências da comunicação, para o seminário O Corpo e o Espaço nas Artes Contemporâneas pretendo trabalhar uma utopia tecnológica específica: o Projecto Vénus desenhado por Jacque Fresco. Trata-se de um projecto de reconfiguração social, tendo como ferramenta de trabalho a cidade. Nas palavras do próprio:
“The Venus Project call for a cybernetic society (…) the Venus Project’s only purpose is to elevate the spiritual and intellectual potential of all people, while at the same time providing the goods and services that will meet their individual and material needs. All of this could only be accomplished in a resource-based world economy where all of the world's resources are held as the common heritage of all of the earth's peoples.”
Jacque Fresco in http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Abstract: There are three fundamental elements that never change: imitation, action and collective participation from the existence of the theatre to today. It started with a ceremonial celebration of the actions of a hunter capturing the prehistoric theater hunt. Hunter, rituals were performed with an 'inactive' and 'collective space' about how to make a 'imitation' connection for those who watched the moment. The places where all the theatrical periods which are Primitive Theater Space, Greek Theater Space, Roman Theater Space, East Theater Space, Medieval Theater Space, Renaissance Theater Space, 17th and 18th Theater Space, 19th Theater Space, Modern Theater Place etc. have been mixed with culture. The poor theater considering that one of the contemporary theaters, was shaped by the playful playwright Antonin Artaud in the words of the playmaker and the audience. In the poor theater of Jerzy Grotovski's theory, the stage, actor and spectator interaction gained a spatial concept, and the participant actors (audience and actor) structured the space physically and perceptually, just like the primitive theater. There is no costume, decor, makeup, light and music in this theater. In this context, the participant experiencing the space cannot be limited to any decorative material or the costume player is wearing, his/her gestures are not in the shadow of plastic makeup. It has been observed that the poor theater supports each other due to the spatial formation of the actor, stage and spectator space in the context of the contemporary theater to eliminate the sharp line between play and life and to integrate the theater with life. The existence of a certain space in the theater is indisputable, but it is spatialized by the conceptual forms created by the interaction of the actor and the audience, rather than the ideas of the stage designer. In this study, a comparative experimental research method was used in order to enable the audience to read the play, to be able to construct play and its belonging to the space, from the past to present.

Keywords: theater space, poor theater, body and space, body perception, spatial perception

Our research question is the role of body in a Ubiquitous era. To answer this question, we propose a study for the design of an innovative gestural corpus to allow a natural, simple interaction and communication in social smart space through the body. The goals of this work are 1) to examine the relation between body and space in Ubiquitous era; 2) to investigate the potential of body and senses to improve one's ability to interact with surroundings; 3) to present a study for a new gestural corpus for smart spaces, adopting a bodystorming approach. This paper introduces the general approach, describes our current statement of research and outlines the planned study design.

Mimarlığın gelecek tahayyüllerini yaparken öncelikle mekânın bedene ilişkin bağlamını teknolojik gelişmelerin izlerini takip ederek düşünmek oldukça önem kazanmaktadır. Gelecek düşüncesi için öncelikle bugün potansiyeli olan gelişmelerin erken sinyallerinin keşfedilmesinin geleceğin mekânlarına ilişkin düşünceyi geliştireceği düşünülmektedir. En genel tabirle sibernetik sistemlerin biyolojik varlıklarla birleşiminden doğan yeni bir melez tür olarak siborg bedenin niteliklerine cevap verebilecek ve bedenle ilişki kurabilecek geleceğin mekânlarının nasıl şekillenebileceği üzerine düşünce geliştirme yolu izlenmiştir. Sonuç olarak, bugünün siborg teknolojisindeki gelişmeleri sonucunda bedenin dönüşümüyle birlikte mekânın aynı kalamayacağı, siborglaşacağı ve güncel mekân tasarım paradigmalarının dönüşüme uğrayacağı düşünülerek yeni söylem ve pratiklerin oluşacağına dikkat çekilmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: siborg, sibernetik organizma, siborg mekân, beden-mekân ilişkisi.
While imagining the future of architecture, first of all, it is very important to think about the body-related context of the space by following the traces of technological developments. For the idea of the future, it is thought that the discovery of early signals of developments that have potentials today will improve thinking about the spaces of the future. In the most general terms, a way of thinking about how the spaces of the future that can respond to the qualities of the cyborg body (as a new hybrid species born from the combination of cybernetic systems) and interact with the body can be shaped. In conclusion, it has been pointed out that as a result of the developments in today’s cyborg technology, with the transformation of the body, the space will not remain the same, it will become cyborg and new discourses and practices will emerge, considering that the current space design paradigms will be transformed. Keywords: cyborg, cybernetic organism, cyborg space, body-space relationship.