At the origin it was the body, the word rendered flesh; ultimately, it is what we are: flesh. Fragments of bodies inhabit storerooms, galleries and museums. Fragments of skin inscribed with a story. It may be all we have left: the body. A body wherein lies our identity. Everything revolves around our body, which may or may not be divine, but is always human. The body is the first thing we notice, our calling card, the first impression. Thanks to the body we feel the endless range of sensations because the body is, undoubtedly, a limitless territory. The body is a volume on a plane, an object from which we can eliminate the soul and convert into matter, an object that is a reference to other concepts beyond the flesh itself.

In his essay A Body That Is Not There the specialist in dance and performance Jaime Conde-Salazar addresses the relationship between live arts and the body, a relationship that originates in the perception of our body as an object of study, a need to know the human organism, a separation of the body-machine-object from the world that reduces it to pure matter with the capacity for motion, a soulless dancer.

The magazine includes portfolios by the following artists: Dorota Buczkowska and Przemek Dzienis, Denis Darzacq, Robert Davies, Alain Fleischer, Jesús Micó, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Rafael Navarro, Mathieu Pernot, Pierre Radisic and Laurie Simmons. Some of them undertake a systematic study of the parts, a cataloguing of the different fragments of this object-body: hands, feet, mouth, navel...isolated elements lacking identity. Others make of it a part of the whole, a part of the essential composition. By eliminating the face, the gesture, the gaze, that body is merely an empty container.

#42 THE BODY AS AN OBJECT

Essay: Jaime Conde-Salazar

Portfolios: Dorota Buczkowska and Przemek Dzienis, Denis Darzacq, Robert Davies, Alain Fleischer, Jesús Micó, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Rafael Navarro, Mathieu Pernot, Pierre Radisic, Laurie Simmons.

Artists: Hans Bellmer, Polly Borland, Balthasar Burkhard, Dorota Buczkowska, Daniel Canogar, John Coplans, Denis Darzacq, Robert Davies, Przemek Dzienis, Alain Fleischer, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, Jana Ilkova, André Kertesz, Herlinde Koelbl, Zoe Leonard, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jesús Micó, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Rafael Navarro, Paulo Nozolino, Mathieu Pernot, Pierre Radisic, Andres Serrano, Laurie Simmons, Edward Weston, Erwin Wurm.

BUY YOUR DIGITAL COPY HERE: