Abstract: While once the preserve of the fairground/theme park ride – everything from the helter skelter to the dodgems (Lukas, 2008; Lynn, 2006), the notion that ‘proprioceptive pleasures’ may have artistic merit has recently been brought to the fore by artists from Carsten Höller (with his Test Site; at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall) to the work of Cildo Meireles. At the same time, there has also been a growing interest in foregrounding the proprioceptive/vestibularly-experienced body in both contemporary architectural practice (Spence, 2020) as well as playful workplace design (Spence, 2021). While proprioceptive awareness typically co-occurs with tactile, kinaesthetic, and vestibular awareness/sensations, it is nevertheless intriguing to see the foregrounding of what have been essential ‘silent senses’ in an artistic/architectural sense, and can be seen as fitting within broader trends around embodied cognition and ‘edutainment’ (Carù & Cova, 2007).
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This lecture took place as part of the workshop "What is proprioceptive art" on 09 March 2022, a kick-off event of an interdisciplinary research project, which poses a radical question: Could there be works of art that are (either primarily or predominantly) proprioceptive in nature: i.e., that have the perception of one’s own bodily movement, position in space, balance, muscle tension, pain, temperature, energy and stress levels, etc., at their core?
Bringing together experts of different disciplines – especially philosophy of art, aesthetics, and art history – the workshop is meant to connect researchers joined by an interest in the phenomenon of proprioception and its relevancy in the art world.
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