Bodies

Knowledge is a matter of the mind. But what about the knowledge embodied by bodies? Racialized bodies, sexualized bodies, traumatized bodies, socially normed bodies? (Lose a few pounds!) Bodies are a tangle of intuitive information, projections, speculations. And this tangle has a noticeable effect on the mind, not least on the minds – and perceptions – of others.

Take, for instance, Olave Nduwanje’s performance lecture: It examines human manifestations and related learning processes under the keyword Bodies.It’s about identities, power relations and communities that are constructed by bodies. But it’s also about inscribed experiences and the possibility of interpreting them differently.

In the Cultural Education program, for example, physical disabilities are exposed as social impediments and the experience of violence and the emancipation of transsexual bodies are articulated in an opera performance. Likewise, physical experiences of corporeality are explored as part of groups, nature or technologies.

How body knowledge can be comprehensible is only slowly taking shape as a movement between learning and unlearning, the process that questions and, in the best case, dismantles habitual patterns of perception. Here, the mind is just a part of the body, of many bodies. What knowledge forms what education? Going back to the tangle of information, projections and speculations: Now that you can no longer see me, can you hear me better?