Embodied Arts
...These days we encounter the term ‘embodiment’ more and more in the dance, therapy and movement scene. There are many offerings that emphasize the unity of body and spirit. Embodiment in the sense of awareness experienced through the body. They are addressing the yearned-for connection with oneself as a ‘totality’, also as a counterbalance to the growing self-alienation in our world. This need has only grown stronger during the pandemic. Our information-flooded lifestyle – even before it began! – has made us conscious of living with distance and separation; increasingly we miss every kind of connection ... and art can evoke this experience.
How can one describe ‘embodied art’?
It is not ‘using’ the body as a means, as a vehicle, or as a formal language. Neither declaring oneself as material nor defining space solely by means of the materiality employed. ‘Embodied art’ - the whole person in space and time with the process of action, bringing it down to a common denominator. It is direct and inescapable. Elsewhere I use the concept of IS-ness for it. It is.
For the viewers, a directness of perception results that adresses them beyond their intellect – but does not exclude it, either. It is like a happening needing no referentiality, neither does it point to something else, something beyond it. So therefore it is its own universe. One can also say that ‘embodied art’ creates a field in which the borders are fluid, and everything is related to everything else.
Andrea Morein, 2020
2021 curation and participation in the group exhibition 'M-bodi-ment-A' in the project space of the Deutscher Künstlerbund, Berlin.