Radical Bodies in Motion

Abstract

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into representation.” (Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle).

We set out to use the spectacle as a medium to respond to the present moment. Throughout the October Revolution, we became both radical participants and critical observers; our desire was to contaminate the city with peculiar heterotopias, to provide a space for fantasy and publish desires to revolt against the aestheticization of politics. But the condition we lived in changed radically and the present moment became obsolete - we had to learn how to exist and operate virtually. Our senses were the only reminder that our bodies still had a physical presence, so we tried to fool our senses to take our bodies to that virtual space.

Engaging with space directly through interventions as a response to a change of events allowed us to engage with creating one’s own history and not the detachment from it. Thus, our thesis became a triangulation of three procedures: observation, experimentation and theorization. These three nodes are delineated in the book through theoretical fragments, observation and analysis, and interventions that recreate this triangulation process.