Performing the Public Body

'Performing the Public Body' investigates democracy as a corporeal practice experimenting with participatory, collectively authored performance processes for empowering democracy in different institutional set-ups. Starting from Rebecca Schneider’s definition of politics as appearing “to others as others appear to me”1 (2017: 51), democracy is seen as a public bodily practice closely intertwined with performance. Looking at democracy as the corporeal expression of collectivity means paying attention to elements that otherwise stay neglected in politics, such as the performativity of bodies’ social movement, use of language, their emotions, etc.  

 

The project takes place in two independent but closely interconnected lines:  

 

(a) an artists-based line of research, taking place at Royal Conservatoire Antwerp and Fontys Academy of the Arts where, together with students, performative tools for practicing democracy as corporeal practice are co-created;  

 

(b) a socially-engaged line of research, with the involvement of medium-sized communities (30-45 people) connected to institutional contexts of democracy (such as political parties, municipalities, etc.), where these performative tools are tested and expanded.  

 

In both cases, project participants co-design performative  processes and (speaking, moving, thinking) tasks able to generate democratic coexistence through the body.  

 

The project draws on Theodoridou’s previous work on 'The Practice of Democracy'  (2019-2024) with three crucial shifts: testing performance processes in existing contexts of institutional democracy, which usually operate more bureaucratically; expanding the size of the communities involved in the research; moving towards more co-authored designs for practicing democracy as a corporeal practice.