[-empyre-] body chair language

Thu Jul 24 07:22:03 EST 2014

Hi Sue, thanks for the correction of “carne” to flesh (not chair).
That’s right. Thanks also to Johannes for his remarks and
contributions.

I hope that my mistake could also contribute to rethink the internal
gaps and holes on the webabel. May we consider the loosing translation
as opportunities to go further on the analysis of the surface? As
doors or mines to find out alter dimensions. I am putting this on
table because the idea of embodiment should be articulated with a
certain profundity and a certain immersion into the alterity.

Thus, let me return to the cultural cannibalism or cultural
anthropophagy, which combines the political, the aesthetical and the
ethnographical.

Cultural anthropophagy was and is in fact a very attractive idea,
coined (as Johannes remembered) by Oswald Andrade, who was related to
the Brazilian modernism. As far as I know, afterwards the 1930’s, this
concept have been simultaneously criticized and recuperated by
Brazilian intellectuals. Nevertheless, I am sure that the concept is
still very useful to think a complex early post-colonial situation
(the independence from the kingdom of Portugal was fulfilled in 1822,
with the resignation of the Portuguese king to become the first
Emperor of Brazil). On the other hand maybe it is important to
reconsider the conceptual borders of the colonial, once the colonial
paradigm continued in Brazil even after its independence, and at the
same time Portugal paradoxically became a colonial State and a
colonized nation (“between Caliban and Prospero”, quoting Boaventura
de Sousa Santos). Sorry for these thoughts about history and
sociology, which maybe are not so fashionable in current times,
neither very adequate to our discussion.

Moving on to the main point, the question is to know if embodiment may
be also be considered a kind of anthropophagy and if so, who or what
is the eater and who or what is the eaten. A note and a correction:
the Oswald Andrade’s term was “deglutir”, which could be translated as
swallowing, as Hellen noted in a past post. I would prefer to consider
this as a first phase of digestion. Thus, this term, although all the
political problems correlated, may also help to unfold the term
embodiment.

Let me quote one of the Oswald d’Andrade aphorisms:

The mind refuses to conceive the mind without the body.
Anthropomorphism. Necessity of cannibalistic vaccine. To balance
against the religions of the meridian. And outside the inquisitions.
(“Manifesto antropófago”, Revista de Antropofagia, Ano 1, N. 1, maio
de 1928).

Moving on: at this precise moment I’m evolved in a project with
Santiago do Chile and Salvador da Bahia. This project was conceived by
the Brazilian researcher Ivani Santana under the title of “EMBODIED IN
VARIOS DARMSTADT 58. ARTE EM REDE: DANÇA E MÚSICA TELEMÁTICA”.
Basically we are looking for embodiment experiences at a scale of
Portuguese-Spanish language in multi-cultural frames.

regards
daniel

2014-07-23 8:09 GMT+01:00 Sue Hawksley <sue at articulateanimal.org.uk>:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Dear Daniel et al.
>
> On 23 Jul 2014, at 07:00, Daniel Tércio <danieltercio at gmail.com> wrote:
>> However, even before (re)visiting the triad of porosity-perception-presence, let me return naively to the use of the
>> term embodiment in different languages. And let me use the experience of Portuguese language that adopted this term, at the same time
>> questioning its adequacy and its translation. Two points arise on this: in Portuguese one may find the term “carne” (chain). Embodiment
>> = “encarnação”? This sounds very mystical when one thinks in Crist as the incarnation of God.
>
> Thanks Daniel for reminding us of the chasms we are all trying to deal with, not just between experience and language, but between languages. Just to clarify and check - I thought 'carne' in Portuguese would mean 'meat' or 'flesh' in English? 'Chair' is the French word for flesh. However, in English, chair is something to sit on, which in bodily-terms is our backside - in Portuguese = traseiro.
> I was at an International conference on gesture in Frankfurt Oder a couple of years ago, and presentations were being signed for any participants with hearing difficulties. I don't sign , but it seemed that the concept "Embodied Cognition" was interpreted by a combination of spelling out the words, together with a gesture to the head - so (if I understood it correctly) 'thinking' was situated in the head, which really complicates grasping the notion of situating thinking in all of the body.
>
> Now to go back to Johannes' question a couple of days ago -
> On 21 Jul 2014, at 07:28, Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote
>
>> Most likely I cannot speak for the participants, although I also tried the system (MotionComposer has 6 environments of different sounds that can be triggered) and failed to enjoy it; the participants with disabilities laughed and cheered it, so they must have felt their movements mattered ..... yet I was worried that it didn't  (and perhaps Sue has some experience on this?).
>
> I haven't done much work specifically with people with dis-abilities, so I can't comment on that particular question. I have however worked with some people who have very different body-experience to my own, being survivors of torture. This really emphasised for me the notion of body as archive (Lepecki) and being haunted by 'ghosts'. (I'm trying to link up questions of ghosts and hauntings and resonances from the last few posts) I feel there is something about the traces of these ghosts' gestures, rendered visible as micro-movements or "ghost-gestures" (Elizabeth Dempster) which pattern the rhythms-resonances-melodies that lend distinctiveness to the 'movement signature' of the individual. This signature, what Shets-Johnstone refers to as kinaesthetic/kinetic melody, seems to me to be quite subtle, something that I for one become more attuned to when engaging in somatic or bodily practices, and through the extension of self in virtual spaces  (whether that virtual is computationally or imaginitively generated).
>
> So, re: snake-oil,  slapstick' engagement, and 'fake' embodiment.: of course I think uber skepticism is useful; almost everything  is mediated through marketing-speak, and funded projects must be seen to approach their stated outcome(s), so the writing about the potential experience can seem to promise more than some people feel they get. We should always be wary of snake-oiliness - especially when the merchant is Facebook - but I agree with Hellen about the amazing potential to understand the intertwinedness of one's own experience in-and-as the system, through spending time in-and-as some amazing interactive environments. Of course we cannot presuppose to acheive the same effect/affect for every participant.
> A lot more has been said since you raised this point. so this repeats a bit. Of course if  time and context limit how long people will spend in an environment, so the interface design might need to have a fast and easily digested interaction, resulting in some people acting in rather basic ways. But this problem isn't unique to "interactive environments". I have only tried skiing once, and was terrible at it, got my feet in a tangle and fell over a lot. I then had a pillion ride with a friend who is an excellent skier. It was amazing!  So I got a fast, cheap & dirty (slapstick/fake?) version of something experienced by  a proficient skier who has invested huge amounts of the time and effort.  For me it was still worth it. Surely interaction and the experience of it occurs along a gradient, its not all either slapstick or metaphysical.
>
> best, Sue
>
>
>
> SUE HAWKSLEY
> independent dance artist
> sue at articulateanimal.org.uk
> http://www.articulateanimal.org.uk
>
>
>
>
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