INVENTIONS OF THE BODY
DATE TO BE CONFIRMED
Due to COVID conditions affecting workshop participants, the start date has had to be adapted to the circumstances of each case.
Beyond its biological imperatives and the contingencies inherent to its being in the world, the body demands to be invented on a daily basis: in image. If each era promotes an ideal body and insists on a catalogue of bodily anathemas, it is in the face of them that each person invents the image of their body, that singular and dynamic image with which they recognise themselves and present themselves to others. Art concentrates the tension between the acceptance of the ideal and its negation, between the approval of the anathemas and their rejection, between submission and rebellion against the stereotype.
PROGRAM
This workshop will be divided into six pre-recorded sessions and 8 live sessions.
To attend the live sessions, it will be necessary to have taken the pre-recorded sessions.
Joel Peter Witkin
PRE-RECORDED SESSIONS
This workshop explores these tensions in two ways:
I. Theoretical part
- Session IIntroduction: The metaphorical body:
The body of the human being is unique and always the same, while at the same time it is so different according to the era in which it develops and the culture in which it develops. The first is the biological body and the second is the metaphorical body, two indivisible bodies like two sides of the same coin. The biological body is determined by its genetics; the metaphorical body is pure invention.
B. Review of four inventions of the body
- Session II. The invention of hysteria.
Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, 1870s and 1880s. The collaboration between the famous neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and the photographers Paul Régnard and Albert Londe led to the creation of a new nosological entity: hysteria. An analysis of the corresponding iconography shows that, in the pursuit of this invention, the inmates themselves were essential accomplices.
-Session III The invention of the female orgasm. From Hedy Lamarr's poetic orgasm in Ecstasy (1933) to Meg Ryan's amusing orgasm in When Harry Met Sally (1989), via Jane Fonda's relentless orgasms in Barbarella (1968) and the nonsensical premise of Linda Lovelace's orgasms in Deep Throat (1972), this brief and explosive bodily function has been invented and reinvented. By dismantling the images that have alternately configured it as myth, shame, pretence, amputation, unfathomable mystery, it is perhaps possible to provide an image of the female orgasm in terms of itself.
- Session IV The Invention of Intimacy. Tulsa, Boston, New York, 1970s and 1980s. Two photographers, Larry Clark and Nan Goldin, portray life inside their respective groups of friends, this new family they have chosen and which has chosen them, their tribe. Only someone as deep down, as is the case with both of them, could have portrayed in such a close and honest way an intimacy otherwise hidden from the conventional gaze of American society at the time. They explore, investigate, search for themselves, invent their own bodies, observing with an empathetic gaze the lives and bodies that populate their surroundings.
Larry Sultan, Teenage Lust
Nan Goldin, The ballad of sexual dependency
- Session V The invention of the trans body.
Since time immemorial there have been traces of the trans body, that dislocated body in which sexual poles and genders merge, a body that is both male and female and therefore neither one nor the other. A review of the multiple forms that this transgressive body has taken will allow us to analyse the visual strategies, motivations and consequences of this persistent invention, which runs along the arcs that go from the creative deity to hormone treatment, from genetic accident to latex skin, from monstrosity to the fashion catwalk, from perversion to the defence of sexual rights.
- Conclusions VI
PRACTICAL SESSIONS
Each participant will have to invent a body during the course, using the visual tools of their choice (drawing, painting, photography, video, performance). Each body thus invented will be submitted to the critical consideration of the group, in successive turns.
Session I: General approach and work dynamics
Session II: Presentation of each participant's project: 5' each
Session III: Review of progress, per project: 5' each.
Session IV: Review of progress, per project: 5' each.
Session V: Review of progress, per project: 5' each.
Session VI: Presentation of final product, first five: 10' each
Session VII: Presentation of the final product, second five: 10' each.
Session VIII: Presentation of final product, last five: 10' each
Antoine d'Agata
registration and costs
C O M M I N G S O O N
BIOGRAPHIES
REBECA GONZÁLEZ
(MEXICO) She is a physiologist, psychoanalyst of Lacanian orientation and photographer. She has presented her work in various group exhibitions in Mexico City and is the author of the project Desde dentro, a photography workshop for indigenous children. Together with Mauricio Ortiz, she participated in the exhibition Futbol, arte y pasión (November 2012 to February 2013) at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, with the series "Los caprichos del balón".
MAURICIO ORTIZ
(MEXICO) He is a doctor, physiologist, editor and writer. He is the author, among others, of the book Del cuerpo (2nd edition, Tusquets, 2016), of the chapter "El cuerpo roto", of the book Frida Kahlo. Sus fotos (RM, 2010) and a dozen articles published in the magazine Luna Córnea. He has taught at the International Photography Seminar at Centro de la Imagen (2012 and 2013 editions) and was part of the curatorial group of the exhibition Punto/Contrapunto, Fotografía Mexicana Contemporánea (2017), at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, California. Member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (2012 generation).