The Body as Art
A Dynamic discourse of ideas & Action
In Action
The Practicalities & Functionalities of working with the body as art.
A Surgery
A made in art exchange
Funded by
Following five days of working with five female artists, between September 3rd & 7th 2012 @ art, Dr Huda and Michael Mayhew took people through an immersive exploration and encounter with the body.
This engagement approached this area of practice to include the intelligence, the psychic and the emotional realms of the body as a personal and social vessel for engagement .
Exploring not only our relationship with the body as self but the body as artist and the concept of the body in communion, the social and cultural body, the community body, the political body, the public body, the shared body.
These thoughts in action enabled all participants to engage with the role of the artist and the relationship between artists and audience, often leading to a dynamic shift in how a witness and audience develop participatory relationships with the work and so the body.
There were no rules or limitations placed upon the people who had signed up for this made in art engagement.
Everything was set into a frame work of perpetual and open negotiation, between the self, the other people present and the space as place.
We did not limit ourselves to a single approach not did we limit our mind set to what the body should be employed for, employed by or employed as, this approach enabled for a broad cross section of approaches to the body to arrive into art and engage with ideas.
We explored the cross over between the dominant mechanistic approach to the body within western society and that of an holistic approach to working with the body.
What we endeavoured to achieve was a dramatic cross over and inter/fusion of understandings and approaches to our existence and to the body as source material both external, internal, virtual, physical, metaphysical and political.
We requested an open encounter with people's ideas and practices and to release social and personal judgements enabling for a cross fertilisation of ideas and approaches and an acceptance of human exploration.
The outcomes were dynamic and life changing as people under went a true exploration of the body and themselves.
Process & Practice
Participants
Original Brief