Modern Body Festival 2014: Art as research through experience

Modern Body platform

Intermedia biennial festival


What exactly is the ‘modern body’? We are inclined to think of our bodies as limited to what is contained within our own skin, but technology, philosophy, spirituality, religion, and science all challenge this idea.

Modern Body Festival (MBF), an intermedia initiative organized by artists / makers / performers Stephanie Pan and Stelios Manousakis, strives to examine the nature of our current existence, as it were, through the perspective of the ‘modern body’. We regard the project’s curatorial aspect, but also its production, as an art-work and architectural project in its own right, whose role is to support an artistic vision that supercedes our own individual practices: it is about raw, physical and intimate experience, built as a multi-layered, organic whole.

This first biennial edition explored how we perceive our bodies – viscerally, psychologically, vicariously. It took place in October 2014 at the former Europol building in Den Haag as a full-day event with site-specific installations, video art, film, music, and sound, interactive and intermedia/multimedia installations, a lecture-performance and live intermedia performances.

Description

Intermedia / interdisciplinary / transdisciplinary festival as art project with performances, installations and screenings

Date & duration

18 Oct. 2014, 18 hours long

Credits

Participating artists: Center no Distractor, Barbara Ellison, Arthur Elsenaar, Jeanette Groenendaal, Chaja Hertog, Kaisku Koski, Valentina Lacmanovic, Francisco López, Nir Nadler, Alberto Novello, Mike Rijnierse, Tivon Rice, Ludmila Rodrigues, Nicolás Varchausky

Location: Former Europol building, The Hague; De Flat, The Hague

Photos: Erin McKinney

Supported by Stroom Den Haag and our generous Kickstarter backers