Politics of Somatic Architecture – proposes a performative and spatial investigation culminating in a series of discursive experimental conversations in a performative setting.
The project investigates heterotopic architectural elements that shape, define and/or provoke the configuration of closeness and distance.
Throughout the beginning of 2020, the shared pandemic reality has led to a series of required heterotopic elements, that proposed a somatic engagement with the architectures we inhabit daily. Whether it is the plexi glass in front of cashiers, new taped line systems, compartmentalized quick test stations, or barrier labyrinths at train stations and airport halls, we are interacting with a series of architectural elements as precaution of human fluids. Alongside these interventions we find ourselves within new performative interdependencies between architecture and the social body.
Architecture can be understood as a directive container that effectively guides collective movements. Formations such as the queue or other compartmentalizations of bodies such as test stations, voting boxes or pedestrian crossings, propose specific somatic performative actions with the potential for social closeness or distance.
As a biopolitical materialization of safety and security, somatic architectural elements become representations and prolongations of governmental directives.
Each new line becomes a symbol, becomes a directive measure, becomes a proposal on how to behave, becomes a suggestion of differentiation, becomes a recommendation of care, becomes a carrier of trust.
From a queer perspective, Politics of Somatic Architecture aims to investigate how architecture can turn into an incorporated experience, that can both shape the social body or be reshaped by it.
Politics of Somatic Architecture proposes a discursive, performative investigation of biopolitical directive architectures from a queer perspective. Through speculative assemblage as methodology with auto theoretical aspects, the project aims to include theory, narratives, experiences, data and daily observations
I define somatic architecture as multilayered elements with heterotopic qualities, that propose a clear dominant directive of their performative use. They are dividing elements, where the hierarchical authority coincides with the potential equality of the user. Somatic architecture can create physical and/or social ease or tension. They are material elements that organise, divide, manage and guide
Somatic Architectures could be:
Crossroads, counters, receptions, guiding tape systems, queue barrier systems, plexiglass divisions, ticket control machines, voting boxes, seating structures, parking lots…
The project took the shape of a series of performative conversations conceived during lock-down in collaboration with artist and interior architect Maike Statz. In temporary shut places, we aimed to explore discover and debate the concept of somatic architectures, hereby creating a sense of how architecture impacts our perceptions of unity, closeness, distance and care.
THESE CONVERSATIONS WILL BE SPECULATIVE FABULATIONS, WHERE NARRATIVES AROUND THE POLITICS OF SOMATIC ARCHITECTURES ARE COLLECTIVELY WOVEN. SUSPENDED BODIES MEET SUSPENDED SPACES WITH SUSPENDED MEANING.
The research was used to propose questions, give inputs, hints or stimulations in order to investigate our agency as inhabitants, builders, consumers, and followers of somatic architectures.
PoSA was realized at the Bar Tempo Tempo in Bergen, and led to the project space NOGOODS.
The project was presented at:
ADD+ART 2021 International Congress on art and artistic practices in social spaces
-> a spatial investigation: PDF
