The Vibratile Body

for: “Decompression Gathering Summer Camp”, Corniolo Art Platform, Florence, Italy 

27 August – 3 September 2016

“…to expand beyond representation, to conquer an intimacy with the body as a vibratile surface that detects the waves even before they arise.” Suely Rolnik

The Vibratile Body invites artists, curators and cultural workers to participate in an exploration on the relation between the micro and macro dimensions of agency looking to test whether changes in the individual self trigger other collective manifestations. 

In an era marked by immaterial labour, hyper abstraction, technology, automation and by capitalism’s constant demand to increase in productivity, we not only undergo dominant politics of subjectivation and manipulation of our relation to the ‘Other’, but equally are hasting to adapt to transhuman requirements of today’s cognitive capitalism. 

We will embark on a one week collective self-experiment that is strongly focused on experience and sharing of daily holistic exercises of “conscientization” (creating a critical consciousness) of our own vibratile body; a re-interpretation of Brazilian educator and philosopher Paolo Freire’s collective dialogue based form of creating critical awareness as a practice of self-empowerment. 

Each day will start with Ashtanga Yoga, in the tradition of Mysore and Sri Pattabhi Jois K., a bespoke practice within the group, whereby a sequence of specified series is carried out in one`s own rhythm of breath and adapted to the individual condition. Ashtanga Yoga is a dynamic meditation that stimulates our sense of mindfulness and awareness through a strong focus on the union of breath and movement, energy flows and focus. This practice will be accompanied by further collective meditations and Pranayama (breathing exercises) throughout the days. These holistic practices will be intertwined with discussions and theoretical readings around the notion of the self as a ‘vibratile body’ in Suely Rolnik, and as a ‘social body’ (e.g. in Franco Berardi Bifo). These engagements will be complemented with visits to local arts and cultural centres and local holistic practices. 

The week hopes to unfold a practical and critical exchange, experience and exploration that questions whether new connections of flows, heightened awareness, empathy and sensitivity can produce new conditions of possibility, forms of self-empowerment and ‘post-otherness’.

The Vibratile Body was invited by the collective Radical Intention for their “Decompression Gathering Summer Camp 2016”; a one-week residency of decompression, communal living and group working that takes place at the end of the summer, before urban life and its busyness picks up again. The Decompression Gathering Summer Camp raises questions like: Can the act of gathering and isolation contribute to articulating new forms of mutual learning and group working? Does experiencing communal life in isolated areas shift social relations? Can the experience of leisure and unproductive daily tasks be a generative process with critical potential?

Photos by Maria Pecchioli

Daily Yoga Practice
Reading Franco Berardi Bifo, Cognitarian Subjectivation
Re-enactment of Lygia Clark’s multisensorial experiments
Local herbal knowledge by Morena Selva
Reading Suely Rolnik, Anthropophagic Subjectivity, 1998
Scuola di Barbiana