Dr. Bojana Pejić has organized many exhibitions of Yugoslav and international art. In 1995 she organized an international symposium, The Body in Communism, at the Literaturhaus in Berlin. She was chief curator of the exhibition After the Wall–Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe, organized by the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1999), which was also shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation Ludwig in Budapest (2000) and at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2000-2001). Dr. Pejić recently curated Gender Check–Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe at MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna). Dr. Pejić lives and works in Berlin (source).

The workshop will deal with the body in the public space, or rather in the street. In the beginning I will briefly present some recent theories about the human body. In his seminal text “Techniques of the body,” Marcel Maus wrote” “The body is man’s first and most natural instrument” (1934).

The next part will discuss “disciplined bodies” and point to several questions: (1) How and What is the Body Politic?; (2) How various body politics are staged and performed in order to organize bodies in “mass ornaments (Krakauer); (3) How political ceremonies and military rituals function in both democratic and authoritarian and/or totalitarian settings where the “bodies-in-order” are used to suggest state stability and social order (in the democratic context) or control (in the totalitarian countries) as explained by Christel Lane. Examples: Olympic games and Spartakiades; celebrations of state holidays (the GDR and SFR Yugoslavia, Korea) and May Day Parades.

The third part will address “undisciplined bodies” that appear in the street during the time of social revolutions and civil unrest: the French Revolution and the barricade, an invention of modernity; the October Revolution and “mass performance”; the student rebellion of ’68; Beijing of 4 May 1898; the fall of the Berlin Wall; and today’s Occupy movements.

The fourth part will deal with artistic performances held in public spaces.

The term “disciplined body” comes from Michel Foucault’s writings, particularly from his Discipline and Punish , 1977 (French original Surveiller et punir, 1975).

Date/ Time:

Tuesday/ Wednesday, April 24/25, 2012
10 a.m. until 17 p.m.

Location:

Ehemalige Parteischule Erfurt
Werner-Seelenbinder-Straße 7
99096 Erfurt