The Relationship Between the Military, Bodies, and Performance Practice by Lydia Cardenas

This map seeks to visualize the relationship between power paradigms that propel the military industrialized complex, the human body, and performance art. I was inspired by interviews with J. and S., both military veterans, and their performance practices. By using the body as a tool for research, performance acknowledges that we know in different ways, thus creating a bridge between the authority of written scholarship with lived experience. So too, veteran artists bridge stratified worlds, constantly recalibrating embodied military training in a civilian environment. By using the cultural capital of art, writing and movement, J. and S. remind audiences of invisible chains of power and authority that connects us to foreign policy and global communities. Power paradigms : neoliberalism, capitalism, colonialism Psyche: woundedness, validation, healing, boundaries

CURATORIAL STATEMENT : Alternative Ways of Knowing

This symposium explores the idea of the body as a tool to generate new ways of knowing. The research convened here, through different lenses, presents embodied practices as alternative frames for epistemology aiming to challenge power paradigms, pursuing new ways of living in a global context of empathy and solidarity.

The following expositions map out a diversity of topics such as inclusion and access; identity and cultural exchange; transnacional connections in dialogue with social practice; performativity and ritualistic expression; as well as policy change.

The reader will discover models of disability that serve as analytical frameworks to assess the historical and personal politics of “knowing” disability. They will explore how experience is embodied, existential, and multisensorial, through veteran artists using performance practice as a research tool and a way of navigating civilian life. Through the lens of global south theory, and by using social practice to identify and disrupt power structures, we imagine a new, alternative path in different contexts of oppression.

And finally, different artists translate embodied knowledge into visual expression by using various embodied practices and exploring universal themes to cross national boundaries through locally grounded practices to construct regional identities.

School of the Art Institute / Proseminar 2 / Spring 2020

Group Members:

Adina Jade Cosden: BE WATER: 和你FLOW CASE STUDY
Lasondra Kern: Turning Embodied Knowledge into the visual arts
Zoe Ma: How Chinese Artists explore cultural identity under global context
Maura Connors: Disability Models as Analytical Frameworks of Knowing
Mariela Acuna & Sofia Gabriel Del Callejo: SOCIAL PRACTICE: THRIVING IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
Lydia Cardenas: Relationship between the military, bodies, and performance practice

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