Abstract

In his Parables for the Virtual, Brian Massumi calls for “movement, sensation, and qualities of experience” to be put back into our understandings of embodiment and culture. He says that our dominant modes of comprehension are almost exclusively visual and linguistic. Massumi wants to instead “engage with continuity,” to encourage a processual, active, sensory and relational approach to the world.

As an artist, I’m similarly concerned with how categories such as ‘body,’ ‘language,’ ‘vision’ or ‘space’ are often presupposed in contemporary culture, and hope to foster greater dialogue around these complex systems and their relationships to affect and meaning-making. Most specifically I ask, ‘How might the body’s continuity, and its potential disruption, be attendant, provoked and contextualized in contemporary art?’.

• Nathaniel Stern (US/SA) is an experimental installation and video artist, net.artist, printmaker and writer. He recently completed his Ph.D. on interactive art and embodiment at Trinity College Dublin, and is currently Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, US.

Full text (PDF) p.  56-58