The Body and technology
in the time OF COVID - 19
Since the original Dyscorpia exhibition took place in Spring 2019, no one has slept well. The past months have seen the very idea of the body caught between two adverse directions. The majority of our bodies have ground to a halt amidst pale bright computer screen and bundles of wires pushed against the dusty corners of our rooms. Meanwhile, other swathes of the population fell silent as their bodies became too occupied and their minds too preoccupied to even look up and attempt participation in the collective fantasy that health and physical integrity are God-given rights. They are the ills and their families, the medical staff who care for them, and the other essential workers whose bodies and willpower never leave the frontlines. We saw them all in flashes on our screens. We saw them aligned in white bedsheets with mouths agape. We saw them frowning forever beyond fatigue. We saw them behind counters encased in plastic with masks askew over their smiles. We still see them and yet we see much more. We see bodies tortured by those supposed to protect them, face-down in dry puddles of oil until there’s no air and no voice and no tomorrow left in them. Many of these images, more than ever before, are imbued with the density of the circumstances in which they were caught. They come from hand-held cameras brandished by people who can no longer believe their eyes. Or from body-cameras appended to torsos shivering with hate and bare fear. As we watch those images from our dry dusty rooms, we too are experiencing a density we knew little of. We are immobilized before screens we no longer turn off in our homes where images and sounds will never again recess. And yet we can see, with unflinching clarity, how much violence there is in the act of denying reality and physicality.
There was a day when we thought the internet would provide a well of shared knowledge about decisions and actions to best implement in real social spaces. But the world, as ever, unfolded differently. In 2020 the physical world, the very spaces between ourselves suddenly became threatening. We didn’t go, or flee online as much as we woke up to the fact that we were already living there in so many ways. When the COVID-19 pandemic became reality, most of the infrastructures required to adapt our lives to it were already in place. The giant online sellers had been offering all imaginable commodities for years and their global distribution networks needed very little adaptation. We already had the audio-video technologies lined-up for professional online meetings. And sure enough we already had our social media brains. All that was left to take into account were our actual, physical bodies. They are now sitting with heavy flesh, hunched over and aching for far too long against our screens. We’re discovering that contrary to popular belief, online technology doesn’t involve decorporealization. Rather, it means acquiring a different weight, a visceral density we have to contend with while we feel new spaces cropping up inside our confined bodies for fervor to accumulate.
Everyone who’s seen the original Dyscorpia exhibition exactly one year ago now has a slightly different body. A body riveted in newly bound spaces. Those who haven’t seen it nevertheless carry their own stupor inflicted by this time of pandemic and systemic violence. We all come to Dyscorpia 2.1 with fresh wounds and old hopes. Artists, curators and public and now encountering online, but as a matter of fact there just might be more physical density sensed all around. Nowadays no one can sleep soundly for the physical pain, like the mental one, is flowing between bodies projected and bodies protracted. Take heed of every detail of the posture you adopt in front of the screen as you’re watching these outstanding works from an international roster of emerging and award-winning artists. For your body is currently registering the pressure that will later wake you up at night. If it becomes overwhelming, then you are seeing Dyscorpia 2.1 as intended. The restlessness you feel is our collective future pushing to happen. Welcome to Dyscorpia 2.1: a remote exhibition and event happening on online platforms only.
DYSCORPIA 2.1 Introduction text and editing by Daniel Laforest
DYSCORPIA 2.1 production and coordination by Marilene Oliver
LIVE DIGITAL and LIVE EVENTS curated by Stephanie Patsula
DYSCORPIA 2.1 open essay started Jonathan Cohn
