Did you know that skin is our biggest organ? It certainly enjoys a lot of significance and attention in our society but mostly not for its amazing protective and temperature-regulating properties. The corporeal, the only thing we will truly own throughout our lives, has been made superficial. Also into a political and religious battlefield, governed by misguided attempts at self-righteous “morality”.
On the other hand, the antithesis to this could be found in the “toxic positivity” movement, surrounding bodies. This personal philosophy looks down upon every “Negative Nancy” not throwing a party for each individual body part and berates those who just want to exist without enthusiastic proclamations of self-love at every opportunity. Stretch marks are not “tiger stripes” or “battle scars”. Freckles are not “pixie dust”. Birthmarks are not “constellations”. Belly rolls are not “love cushions”. They just exist and it’s OK. It’s also OK, though, to have a positive mindset and an optimistic approach, to perceive all the alleged “imperfections” as something to be embraced and celebrated – and it’s OK if you don’t. You just have to be OK with you. At peace is enough. Accepting is enough. Comfortable is enough. You don’t have to be madly in love with your physical shell. Snuggle up in your body or challenge it from time to time; – again, up to you.
All the same, there are many reasons why humans sometimes seek to tweak their bodies or distort their digital image. Digital alterations to bodies will never cease to amaze, disgust, wow, creep and, frankly, arouse us. The byproduct of this can be a phenomenon called the “uncanny valley”, be it androids or digitally rendered humanoids. The uncanny valley is the region of negative emotional response towards robots that seem “almost” human. That’s why cute, talking maintenance robots, albeit modelled on humans, don’t provoke the same involuntary reaction as Sophia, the social humanoid robot developed by Hanson Robotics. Unlike her, we don’t suspect the walking vacuum to “trick” us into thinking it’s one of us and infiltrate our social circles.
Nonetheless, you can’t sufficiently cover the vast universe of topics that concern bodies in one introductory article – nor I’m going to attempt so. That’s the job of all the amazing artists we’ll introduce to you in the course of the next four months during HEAVENLY BODIES.
They’ll tackle “pictorial flesh” in paintings using bloody and meaty colours; the issues of the female visual image in photography, broadcast in the media and mass culture, inseparable from sexuality, increasingly aggressive in nature; Southeast Asia-inspired painted jungles of exotic flowers, sold bodies and cult statues.
An installation aiming to enclose you in a womb-like contraption to induce feelings of closeness and comfort; characters immersed in digital collages, forced to deal with unreal emotions; tackling one’s own conflicting physicality through paintings; 3D audiovisual universe where you can see and hear a human being and their inner bodily and mental fluctuations.
A cycle of painting as a contemporary take on cave and primitive art motives; seeking the thin line between design and fashion; the transition of materials such as silicone, resin, found objects and plastic into garments; jewellery and its place on the body as a display of wealth, social status and the wearer’s inner world; wearable emotions inspired by the story of Pandora; a liminal space where the boundaries between fashion, sculpture and body are alienated.
You will read essays and thoughts on you being someone else’s mind porn material and digital bodies in porn, the ephemerality of icons throughout the ages, poetry musing on the corporeal. The new music section will bring in-depth interviews and reviews.
And so much more.
To finish this off with a takeaway, let’s just go over these simple rules again.
1/ All bodies are deserving of respect.
2/ All bodies are deserving of love.
3/ Mind your damn business.
See? Simple. Study up, these will be covered in the Decent Human Being 101 exam next week.
Yours with love
The SWARM Mag Team
CREDITS
Text / Františka Blažková
Animace / Natália Peterková @peterkovaa
For your reading pleasure
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Professor Heather Widdow’s book is Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal /https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/quest/towards-a-better-society/beauty.aspx
An honest look at hybrid theories of pleasure/ Daniel Pallies, Philosophical Studies 178 (3):887-907 (2021)
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