Baltan & Onomatopee’s The Body is a Movement programme is travelling to Milan for the Design Week between 15–21 April. A selection of projects are exhibited at BASE, Milan, during the week. On April 18th at 17:00 there will be a public talk with designers that explore the human body in their practice. While living in capitalist structures, our bodies became vehicles for profit. To be optimised for productivity and efficiency. These beautiful, astonishing, wondrous bodies of ours, capable of experiencing so much joy and excitement - how can we reclaim them?
Exhibition
Four design projects challenge how we feel and take care of our bodies. Hacking how we move, changing how we listen, and exploring how we can feel the world differently through our bodies.
Weathering Ports by Yeon Sung
Sensing, Performing, and Acting Bodies by Yeon Sung. Weathering Ports investigates the pollution of Maasvlakte, an artificial industrial zone within the Port of Rotterdam. The project explores the polluted weather of Maasvlakte as an embodied phenomenon and offers ways to experience this with our bodies. The bike is equipped with sensors collecting data from the biker and its environment. This project was co-produced by Yeon Sung and V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media.
Twinning Underneath by Qiaochu Guo
This series of objects blends the space and the body in a way that stimulates the senses, interpreting the experience and speculation of the moxibustion (a medical treatment) in body reparation. Moxibustion leads to self-healing by stimulating the body's internal circulation through burning mugwort above the surface of the body. The moxibustion is a spiritual guide for inclusivity and tolerance, in a gesture of rest, pause and breathe to allow the body to recover autonomously. It embraces the body in its anti-modernity manner: it requires to stop, rest, breathe, sleep, and sweat.
Sonic Driving by Laura Papke
Our inner bodies are constantly working, producing, composting, decaying, and degrading. Our body is a whole ecosystem constantly in conversation with itself and the world around us. In Sonic Driving, you hear, experience, appreciate and enjoy your bodily processes. It is a participatory performance that aims to foster collective healing processes through hearing and feeling your heartbeat.
Touching Matter by Dora Lehy
With Touching Matter you are invited to touch, hold, caress, press, feel the different softness and temperatures of the Touching Tools. Their tactical characters vary in materiality: the warmth of wood, the fleshy resistance of foam, the cool and smooth surface of unfired clay. All leave different sensory memories in the palm of your hand. The round shapes came about through an embodied-making process: by swaddling clay, mimicking a mothering practice, it curled into shape through its own weight and the holding force of the wrap. Touching Matter proposes the potential of a touch-forward culture by bringing tactile awareness in our relations with the material world and ultimately with each other.
Public Talk
An afternoon talk about our relation with our bodies. While living in capitalist structures, our bodies became vehicles for profit. To be optimized for productivity and efficiency. These beautiful, astonishing, wondrous bodies of ours, capable of experiencing so much joy and excitement - how can we reclaim them?
Speakers:
Erica Curci is an artist based in Milan. Her artistic research dialogues with the field of biology and the relative processes of animal and plant world, in order to find a connection between species. Analyzing the outermost layer of the human body, the skin, which at the same time separates us and connects us with the outside, she investigates the relationship between (human) bodies and microbes.
Femke Hoppenbrouwer is a social designer and concept creator focussing on topics that, she thinks, remain unseen in society. She works around small details that tell big stories; and translates complicated issues into understandable and fun concepts.
Laura Papke is an interdisciplinary artists based in the Netherlands. In her work she investigates heartbeat synchronisation. Laura explores this phenomenon using low-frequency sound. Her vision is to cultivate communal well-being by crafting experiences that foster deeper connections.
Hosts:
Cecilia Casabona is an independent curator and an interdisciplinary designer, collaborating with Onomatopee as Associate Curator, a culturehouse in Eindhoven (NL) with an exhibition space, publishing house, and RISO workshop. Cecilia’s practice/research focuses on collective strategies of thinking and “doing otherwise” with a particular interest in the notion of productivity in the neoliberal West.
Lorenzo Gerbi is a designer, curator and educator based in Eindhoven (NL). He is the co-director of Baltan Laboratories, a cultural indisciplinary lab focusing on societal issues through a relational approach, creating spaces to rehearse living otherwise.