The Anatomies of and Art Catalogue

This program was a public event organized in conjunction with the artwork Exhibition Library by Dušan Barok (Monoskop), presented in the 10th Seoul Mediacity Biennale Eu Zên.

The workshop was set to explore the notion of catalogue: articulations between form(s) and content(s), time(s) and space(s). The participants are invited to engage with hybrid physical and digital (open source) tools, and overlaying techniques. The workshop may be seen as a temporary lab to collectively share methodologies and discover modes of structuring new cataloguing possibilities and formats.

Method
somatic practices (movements, gestures, relations between bodies in time and space) + archiving practices (searching, collecting; structuring and presenting content);

Structure
introduction; embodiment exercises; prototyping; presentation and discussion.

Outcome
creating a catalogue which represents an imaginary exhibition; The catalogue is here seen as the culmination of cultural bodies; political bodies; poetic bodies; imaginative bodies and the power to evoke other bodies and future anatomies to come. Opening up the horizon of what a catalogue is; or can be.

References
“To explore the nature of ‘thinking in action’ or thinking-feeling-knowing’ operative within artistic practice, especially produced within collaborative exchange..” — Emma Cocker, et al.

“… an approach to research-creation as a practice of interdisciplinary event design, or to quote the original application, as the practice of creating innovative ‘platforms for organizing and orienting live, collaborative encounters.’” — Erin Manning, et al.

“The body is an arrangement in spacetime, a patterning, a process; the mind is a process of the body, an organ, doing what organs do: organize. Order, pattern, connect… an immensely flexible technology, or life strategy, which if used with skill and resourcefulness presents each of us with that most fascinating of all serials, The Story of My Life.” — Ursula K. Le Guin (Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places)

Joana Chicau is a graphic designer, creative coder and researcher with a background in classical and contemporary dance, currently based in The Netherlands. http://joanachicau.com