Bodies in Transition

 

4 February - 7 March 2010

 

©Fried Contemporary Art Gallery & Studio

 

Curated by Elfriede Dreyer

Bodies in transition, curated by Elfriede Dreyer, includes fourteen female artists’ work and deals with women’s perspectives on the human body in relation to society’s ideas and perceptions thereof. Not only does the theme relate to the body  with regard to time, but especially to changes under influence of technology and the media. Artists will interpret aspects such as virtual reality, post-humanism, media culture, and identity and environmental issues. The participating artists are Amita Makan, Irene Naude, Karin Lijnes, Wilma Cruise, Antoinette Murdoch, Jenna Burchell, Thelma van Rensburg, Anna-Lynne Marais,  Celia de Villiers, Majak Bredell, Senzeni Marasela, Erna Bodenstein, Edna Gee and Nathani Luneburg.

 

Foreword by Amanda du Preez

For most of us having a body seems an uncontested fact. It is natural to have a body. But perhaps thinking differently about our bodies, namely also considering that not only do we have bodies, but what’s more we are our bodies, could be a useful endeavour. In other words, just as much as HAVING a body is part of the deal; to the same extent is BEING a body part of human existence. Why make this distinction? In the culture that we live in we have come to place excessive prominence on the having-a-body part and not being-a-body. What this means is that we have developed a mostly instrumentalistic attitude towards our bodies. For many of us, our bodies are obstinate pieces of meat that refuses to do what we want it to do. It eats too much, it does not respond well to exercise; it turns lethargic in the afternoons. Or for the lucky ones their bodies are malleable substances that obey every whim. And if that does not work there is alway plastic surgery?

 

Fortunately, the real embodied expereince of what it means to be human challenges uncomplicated consumerist notions of the body e.g. the “be whatever you want to be” slogan of our times. This assumption that everything is malleable flow is aptly described by Dave Willis (1995: 81): “The postmodern economic simulacrum, the system of exchange that seems to be posited on purer and purer flow, an always more fluid abstraction from the solidity of the commodity, simply occludes its own reliance on a play between solid and fluid forms”.

 

Please excuse me if I tread on toes – the fact is you cannot be whatever you want to be without taking the given or the solid into consideration. Let me explain: In contrast to fashionable ideas that propagate an endless flow of material possibilities, I would propose there are limits to how the body can materialise. Elizabeth Grosz agrees: “The body is not open to all the whims, wishes, and hopes of the subject ...”’ (1994, 187, original emphasis). This is not to imply that bodies are stable and unchanging entities (the ‘anatomy is destiny’ dictum of Freud), but rather to foreground matter as vigirous intelligence with a ‘mind’ of her own manifesting in ‘multiple modalities’ (Kerin 1999: 91). Embodiment is, accordingly, not understood as form (mind) imposing itself on matter (body), but rather as a process that irrupts in mind-matter and becomes a “state of matter” (Battersby 1998: 9). Central to my argument is the notion that embodiment is a prerequisite for existence, for, once ruined, embodiment cannot be replaced. Katherine Hayles (1999: 49) reiterates: “Embodiment can be destroyed, but it cannot be replicated. Once the specific form constituting it is gone, no amount of data massaging will bring it back.”

 

Therefore, returning to the matter at hand here: bodies are in transition, defintely. They are not however transitioning beyond their own inherent natural possibilities. Let me emphasis: Even if you change your body drastically through surgery, or your body gets mangled in an accident, it is still the given parameters that you are living through, cell by cell, thought by thought, on a daily basis. In other words, you still have to embody all the changes, albeit painful, joyful or a disappointment. There is no getting beyond the body and it is my contention that the contemporary emphasis on having a body allows us to forget that fact quite often.

 

We also ARE our bodies.

Bruno Latour sums it up: “the opposite of body is not emancipation,  .... the opposite of body is death” [my emphasis].

Anna-Lynne Marais, Aanhou beweeg en geraas maak II, 2009