Bodies

In today’s world, the body is one of the foremost political and cultural battlefields. Gender studies and postcolonial thought have helped to extend the rights and freedoms related to the human body. Feminism is currently the flag bearer in the struggle towards equality for women. But more than just championing rights for women, it is at its core a movement with two universal messages: the fight to bring visibility to invisible groups and therefore to acknowledge alterity as a principle; and the conviction that one’s body and personal life are, ultimately, political and cultural spaces.

By treating the human body as a priority area, we can defend the importance of physical presence in an increasingly virtual world. This means trusting in the physical connection between strangers, in the possibility of looking each other in the eyes and seeing our own reflection. It means acknowledging the importance of surprise, curiosity and the unexpected. Basically, committing to the here and now and defending a mixture of languages and performing arts as a way to channel one of the most human of characteristics: the power to create.