Body, Philosophy, Art II. (Non)Movement and Public Space

The Summer issue of Maska continues its reflection on transdisciplinary intersections of contemporary artistic practices, philosophy, society, culture, science and technologies. Again, it takes up the topic of “Body, Philosophy, Art”, whose first, more extensive part was published in the previous issue of the journal. In addition to specific artistic projects (from the fields of both performative and intermedia artistic practices), two articles focus on peripheral areas – they thematise the radical changes in the more contemporary understanding of the body and corporeality compared to previous, still predominantly modernist conceptions. In his contribution, Tomaž Toporišič deals with performative revolutions in the works of the Slovenian theatrical neo-avantgarde and the theorised performance art of the last decade; he pays special attention to the changed, destabilised relation between the spectator’s and the actor’s or the performer’s bodies. In her text, Polona Tratnik explores the field of linkages between art and science. Using the examples of artistic thematisations and use of the tools and techniques of genetic profiling in the works of contemporary artists Paul Vanouse and Špela Petrič, she analyses the manifestations of the body and its offprints in the technology of DNA profiling. Special attention is given to the question of the possibility of scientific access to truth.

In addition to these texts, the present issue of Maska contains contributions that could be grouped under a joint heading “(Non)Movement and Public Space”. The articles by Katja Čičigoj and Pia Brezavšček consider movement and its deconstruction; the authors ponder the subversiveness of non-movement and slowness and their political implications, and they position them within the broader context of western (hyper)modernity as well as within the context of photographically and cinematically represented temporality. The texts by Patrick Primavesi and Jasmina Založnik tackle the topic of movement in public space from the other end of the spectrum; they draw on the concrete examples of flash mob to lay out the strategies and the contexts of this phenomenon.

The topic of “(Non)Movement and Public Space” receives yet another articulation in this issue of Maska. Specially for this issue, the event Green Light (Zelena luč) by Mateja Bučar, which offers an artistic response to the topic, was recorded using the technology of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). The project, which develops further the unstoppable urban choreography of contemporary times at those intersections in Ljubljana which are equipped with traffic lights, was recorded using the technology that has recently become more prominent in numerous areas for capturing and recording the shape and the changes of the surface the Earth and of various anthropogenic objects.