Studio Interact – PERFORM, BODY
BA Major Art
BA Art Studio
Summer semester
‘Command’ is the topic our Studio chose for this Summer semester 2020 – and it just occurred that, since early March, a set of instructions and rules has been shaping our interhuman behaviour. Simultaneously, a relatively new teaching format got as well rapidly implemented by all schools, so to allow continuity in education in the sanitary emergency. We started our online classes with a mix of frustration and thrill. Staying forcibly separated from each other, at the beginning felt like an objective limitation to our dialogue and work process – yet, distance got gradually perceived as an opportunity to test one of the formats that performance allows. The peculiarity of performing online, is that the body of the performer gets linked – via a technological mediation – to a detached and potentially elusive audience. In the online setting, the spectator seems to gain more ‘power’, as he/she can more easily break the linearity and progression of the live action, for instance by dropping out or attending it discontinuously, or by withholding empathy. The physicality of the live-exchange is there replaced by a transaction of an almost voyeuristic nature, to produce a relationship whose two ends undergo uneven amounts of risk-taking. In order to explore and understand the implications of this virtual connection to an audience, the students turned their living rooms into workspaces. In there, they trained and acquainted the body to exposure, and regularly shaped and presented sets of live works of a dazzling precision. They worked through instructions, improvisation and shared decisions, individually or in small groups, letting us witness how a sense of confidence progressively sharpened in them. They reminded us that to express through the body relates first of all to a discreet process of inwards content negotiation, regardless of the ‘display format’ we choose to adopt.
