Apr 2, 2019 — Jun 9, 2019

Multilogues on the Now: Technologies of the Body

Multilogues on the Now: Technologies of the Body

Main Commission: Luiza Prado de. O Martins With Edna Bonhomme, Rebecca Beinart, Trans*parent, Margrit Shildrick, Kateřina Kolářová, Dagmar Schultz, Ika Hügel-Marshall and others Organised by Hana Janečková, Zuzana Jakalová, Zbyněk Baladrán, Ondřej Kozák, Maria Neumannová and others

Project's Opening: 2 April 2019, 18:00 Exhibition: 2 April 2019 – 9 June 2019

This year’s programme for Multilogues on the Now: Technologies of the Body explores our bodies as spaces of interaction between gender, technology, race and power structures. It questions the limits and barriers of bodily autonomy, produced and maintained through those conditions, while opening up discussion around radical approaches to care and intergenerational solidarity.

As the main commission of the programme we have invited Brazilian artist and designer Luiza Prado de O. Martins. Luiza’a work is strongly committed to decolonising western styles of knowledge and design, researching indigenous Brazilian medicine and herbs, natural cycles and reproduction through thinking about the body as a technology and the body as design. In her poetic and political approach the power of the autonomous knowledge of past generations and their relationship with the land under systems of oppression may serve as a model to re-imagine our relationships with ourselves and others.

Luiza Prado’s commission is accompanied by a series of talks and conversations, screenings and events that further develop the themes she foregrounds in her long term research and practice. Theoretician Edna Bonhomme (Bard College, Berlin) and artist and curator Rebecca Beinart (Primary, Nottingham, UK) will work with Luiza Prado and local participants on untangling some of complex issues of western hegemony—biotechnologies, pharmaceutical industry, toxicity, reproductive health—as well as discussing positions that offer potential forms of an anti-colonial resistance.

Feminist director Dagmar Schultz and African-German feminist activist Ika Hügel-Marshall will join Multilogues to introduce their film Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 about African-American activist, poet and breast cancer survivor Audre Lorde and her influence on the African-German women’s movement. Kateřina Kolářová (FHS Charles University) will be in conversation with leading disability studies scholar Margrit Shildrick, whose research is centred around bioethics, posthumanism and prosthetic theories. Using the concept of living books, the Prague-based organization Trans*parent will discuss issues of reproductive health in the lives of trans people.

Multilogues on the Now: Technologies of the Body is the third part of a series organised by Display: Association for Research and Practice in collaboration with curator and theoretician Hana Janečková exploring questions of health in the late capitalist society.

Events/live programme

2 April 2019 – Project’s opening and performance by Luiza Prado 10 April 2019 – Symposium with Luiza Prado, Edna Bonhomme and Rebecca Beinart and others 25 April 2019 – Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992: a screening and discussion with documentary makers Dagmar Schultz and Ika Hügel-Marshall 15 May 2019 – Symposium with Margrit Shildrick and Kateřina Kolářová in conversation with Hana Janečková 5 June 2019 – Living books with Trans*parent

For live recording of events please click here to our Vimeo.

Symposium 1

Symposium 2

The project was supported by Charles University, project GA UK No 250763.