From Akántaros we propose research in a state of alert.
LATE Laboratory Technology, Art, Body and Extracorporal Devices.
A programme of research, reflection, experimentation and artistic creation focused on the body, functional diversity and technical assistance or extracorporeal devices, with technology as a working vector. One of the lines of action of the Body, Health and Autonomy Laboratory Programme developed at Medialab Prado and co-funded by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation in the period 2017-2019 within the line ‘Composing Knowledge to respond to contemporary challenges’ in its area ‘Citizen Art’.
In this first year, three main actions will be implemented, focusing on ecosystems, creation and experimentation, and a final one on reflection, all with the main objective of exploring, recognising and widening the gaze on the diversity of bodies and speculating on new aesthetics and forms of action in the broadest sense.
- Ecosystems: In the first of its phases we will carry out a series of sessions of debate and visibilisation of cultural agents, stakeholders and workers linked to the arts of the body in movement, functional diversity and technology. An ecosystem still to be explored and which we hope will bring to the surface a multitude of sensitivities, ideas and new ways of looking at and understanding each other. In addition to all the learning we will be able to strengthen the network with new tools and resources that will be generated in the process.
- Creation and experimentation: we will gather the results, tactics, returns and possibilities that are pointed out from the first action in order to propose new projects, prototypes and experimentations. Workshops, calls, staging, performance, collaborative development of projects will be some of the activities with which we will carry them out.
- Analysis and learnings: dumping of everything generated in the other two lines to improve their connection, possibilities, interpretation that allows the less visible and the unexpected to come to the surface. Permanent activity of listening and observation of the actions, always with an active reception device for their study and dissemination in exhibitions, videos, texts, images, documentaries…
What happens when diversity bursts onto the scene? There are already experiences and journeys that take us away from the normative body and focus us on the singular body. It transforms the character of accepted aesthetics, deconstructs the idealised body image and the canons of the time, rethinking art itself and advancing new approaches to diversity. This is where this space for experimentation is situated, in which a new form of expression is also sought for the very technical aids or extracorporeal devices that surround our lives, from the most everyday diversity such as glasses or a crutch to the most cyborg.
In the field of the arts, control, disciplines and normativity have long since been abandoned in order to address new aesthetic and discursive challenges. Connecting this scenario with the new paradigm of functional diversity makes us think about the irruption of the plural body and have the opportunity to create and build new references. We have the necessary conditions to propose and think critically in new aesthetic introspections, new worlds and realities. To destabilise the personal trait in order to break stereotypes and speculate with all bodies and devices as motors of creation. To merge hybrid artistic practices with the new technological possibilities of today and to continue transforming the way we look at diversity and artistic disciplines.
For all this, we understand that art is a space for proactive, speculative and critical thinking that will be present in each of the areas of work. Artistic practices, in their relationship with other fields of knowledge, will provide us with keys for reflection and action to move from the most everyday in personal and community autonomy to processes in which art is a factor for improvement and inclusion. The influence or transformation implied by the relationship between technology and the body expressed through the arts of the body in movement. In this way, exploring contemporary artistic creation from the body and diversity, autonomy and out-of-body assistances.
There will be open debates, workshops, meetings and collaborative development of projects together with other institutions and collectives that already work in this sense in different artistic fields, focusing especially on the performing arts, performance and art media. We will seek to generate new references, formal, performative, methodological, storytelling, technological proposals, etc. during the activities from autumn 2018 to autumn 2019.
Project developed by: Francisco Díaz, Laura Szwarc and Camila Maggi.
All the information in the link.
Time to Play that is the best
