The Body is
the Medium
Film | InstallationIn a dizzying array of layered audiovisual elements, this installation brings the communion between mind and body to the forefront. The audio layers sampled tracks from Cicada Dream Band—an interspecies collaboration featuring musician David Rothenberg, overtone singer Timothy Hill, avant-garde composer Pauline Oliveros, and humming cicadas, superimposed by Constantine Cavafy’s poem “Body, Remember,” recited in both Greek and English.
This jarring and disorienting soundscape clashes with the fluid movement of the projected body, creating a dynamic interplay of sensory stimuli. In all their dissonance, these elements do not exist in isolation; they are in conversation with each other, inviting the viewer to participate in the dialectic. Through this intentional juxtaposition, the installation raises questions about the relationship between mind and body, challenging the Cartesian mind-body divide.
This jarring and disorienting soundscape clashes with the fluid movement of the projected body, creating a dynamic interplay of sensory stimuli. In all their dissonance, these elements do not exist in isolation; they are in conversation with each other, inviting the viewer to participate in the dialectic. Through this intentional juxtaposition, the installation raises questions about the relationship between mind and body, challenging the Cartesian mind-body divide.
To move is to engage the potential inherent in the preacceleration that embodies you. Preaccelerated because there can be no beginning or end to movement. Movement is one with the world, not body/world but body worlding. We move not to populate space, not to extend it, but to create it.
Erin Manning