Page 178 - AC-3-3

Arts & Communication Digital somatic arts: Choreographing autonomy

the effects of technology. All these destabilizations interact What we find interesting about this definition is that
with the new technological environment to bring about corporeality is presented as a transdisciplinary concept,
the modification of the physical body (corporality), because it was created in a collaborative process in which
its evolution in transformation, and its phenomenal different artistic disciplines (dance, theater, visual art,
mediation. Here, the interaction between these different and music) and fields (art, philosophy, anthropology, and
destabilizations, principally caused by video conferencing psychoanalysis) grappled with this complex phenomenon,
technology, will develop, alter, and enrich experiential which is an experiential and lived phenomenon. In this
learning, as well as our aesthetic (in the etymological concept, we see that the body is not limited to its biological
sense of feeling, perceiving, and linking) and cognitive identity or to its anthropomorphic limits—the body goes
(as in Gardner’s approach) possibilities, and their beyond the skin. It is a conception of the body as a living
interrelationships. Indeed, we are in a state of mutation, our entity that is open to exchange, porosity, and plasticity.
own Merleau–Pontian body is mutating, and this mutation Corporeality is a state of the body that can be activated.
can enrich our experience of the world, as revealed via To give an image, dancers, or people who have had a great
these experiments. deal of body training, will express this by saying: “I’ve
To understand the profound changes at work in this understood how to do it, I’ve found my way.” For them,
transformation, we need to re-examine the foundations of this means that they have understood how to organize
our Western culture. There are a number of conditions we their sensations within their body, how to become aware
need to take into account if we are to activate these effects of this sensory organization, and how to activate it to make
and begin to understand them. These are (i) the adoption connections. This type of knowledge can also be situated
of a specific angle from which to approach, understand, with respect to others, such as a performer on stage to his
and experience technology, (ii) the revisitation of our audience, or a teacher to the pupil or client.
understanding of the moving, performative body, (iii) Often, we have the impression that the other, at a
the exploration of the influence that the integration of distance, can touch us, that they are in contact with us,
somatic principles may have on points (i) and (ii), and that they are able to “expand” to make contact with us. This
(iv) the reconsideration of the relationship between the enables the body to go beyond itself to communicate with
moving body and technology, from which will emerge an the other, in an empathic form of communication made
ontological shift of the body in this new context. These possible by the dissolution of the mind–body boundary.
questions lead us into a process of research and creative This corresponds to the sensation that the skin no longer
experimentation that is constantly changing. exists, and that we are in a different kind of communicative
relationship with the other. Here, our bodily state changes,
6.2. Second condition: The emergence of and the other person is able to perceive it. There is a
intercorporeality transition from corporality to corporeality. This is what we
To re-examine our understanding of the body, the have identified as the state of intercorporeality (a bodily
definition of Perrin, professor of dance at Paris 8 type of intersubjectivity), a capacity to transmit, to perceive
49
University, is useful: from a distance, another type of communicative state.
It is the entire problem of classical ontology that views When Germain spoke of the lack of confidence she and her
the body as “being full” that needs to be reviewed. The students might have had in their ability to perceive each other,
body is no longer considered a closed and intimate reality it was partly this intercorporeality that was in question. For if
referenced as an essence; neither can it be reduced to its this intercorporeality exists outside the technological context,
biological reality. Corporeality must be thought of as an it had to be recreated in the context of the sensory-perceptual
opening, like a crossroad of influences and relationships; impoverishment imposed by video conferencing. And it
it is a reflection of our culture, of our imagination, of was by adapting these sensory-perceptual destabilization
our practices, and of social and political organization. strategies—and intensifying the process of validating sensory
The term “corporeality” (“corporéité”), with its more information—that Germain managed to achieve such
plastic connotations, communicates a changing, mobile, positive results. By being deprived of a good deal of sensory
and unstable reality, made up of networks of intensities information, both students and Germain were forced into
and forces. Referencing the thinking of artists (Cezanne, a greater destabilization, which resulted in them becoming
Artaud, Kandinsky, Bacon, Cage) and thinkers (Mauss, aware of the new sensations at play and rebuilding the
Merleau–Ponty, Ehrenzweig, Deleuze and Guattari), intercorporeal link through the video conferencing system.
50
Bernard elaborated a concept based on the analysis of Corporality and intercorporeality are thus forms of the
sensoriality. 51 lived body. The phenomenon of dissolution of the psycho-

Volume 3 Issue 3 (2025) 8 doi: 10.36922/ac.4477