Body and Pandemic: The Social Effects of Confinement

The pandemic has obliged us to reduce to the maximum physical contact with others, creating a social distance we are not accustomed to. The body has stopped being a space of relationship and intimacy to become a surface we must protect from any kind of contact. This is an unprecedented social situation in a globalised world where the habit of constant mobility, crowded spaces, and the possibility of encounters and physical contact between bodies prevail. 

From the desire for encounters, for moving, and for other bodies, we have gone to isolation, confinement at home, and suspicion about the others. But what has this revealed about our relationships, and way of life? What do we want to do with them? Can we use them to rethink the health of our bodies and of our human relations? And what possibilities of the digital technologies do we want to keep, or avoid, in a post-pandemic society?

In this session the queer writer, artist, and activist Wendy Delorme and the artist Joana Moll will talk about these questions in a discussion which, moderated by the philosopher and translator Xavier Bassas, will take place simultaneously in Barcelona and Lyon both on-site and virtually. Núria Guiu will participate in the event with the presentation of an abstract inspired by the piece Spiritual Boyfriends.

This event is part of the celebration of the Night of Ideas, a project of the French cultural network that promotes the free circulation of ideas and knowledge by means of a simultaneous holding of cultural events around the world. This session will be held with the French Institute of Barcelona and the Lyon École de l’Anthropocène.