The Body as Ground of Belonging

Guests: Milica Trakilovic and Christine Ayo
Language: English
 
This evening about identity, home and the body is a collaboration between studium generale – Kitchen Table Conversations and Honours Programme – Talks with Honours
 
In his song Not Perfect, comedian Tim Minchin sings: ‘This is my body. And it’s fine. It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.’

What does it mean to be at home in a body? And what does it take to find a space in society where your body can belong, safely and freely? Looking for answers to these questions studium generale and Honours Programme will come together with researcher Milica Trakilovic and artist Christine Ayo for an open talk. Christine blurs the line between audience and artwork, tackling issues such as: politicisation of bodies, violence against women and hidden colonial histories rooted in daily life. Milica researches how female bodies have been marked as territory, as ‘the body of the nation’. She shows the potential of art to reinstate the body in its fleshly complexity against this overdetermined image of the female body as symbol of the nation-state.