The body as text: social body

Movements as knowledge transmittal is an ancient writing method. Text as movement is traceless and communicates unlike the mere intellect to other spheres of the human being.

In the age of instant communication technologies, Western cultures begin to approach the polysemic and simultaneous communication systems of non-Western cultures. Consequently, the hubris of the alphacentric and hierarchical Western civilization yields towards the awareness of diversity and connectivity affecting science, the social and environmental sphere.  

Alternative writing methods and the creation of diversified texts are since ever characteristics of the arts which developed in our days a whole faculty of alternative communication structures and models. In art, and especially in contemporary dance, this awareness of a multilayered communication system brought the reflections of the human being and its relations onto a discursive level reaching, therefore, all spheres of societies. In art, the understanding of alternative communication structures reflects an awareness of connectivity re-defining the idea of it continuously, as science, neuroscience, and anthropology deliver always new insight and theses. The situation of the artist is one of a critical visionary with the idea of autonomy at its core, and therefore, in society in an antagonistic position.  Art has been in all periods a “fait social”, and in our days this aspect is emphasized as the collective being seems more alert facing financial, political, and environmental threats on a global level.

In the contemporary situation are recognized diverse forms of communication codifications like the digital communication structures as they are, anthropologically spoken, an extension of our nerve nets, and are integrated artists in interdisciplinary researches, leading to a new understatement of the individual in society summed up in the social body.

No wonder that modern or contemporary dance is so attractive not only for its aficionados. The dance allows us to take part in something yet unknown, to explore a combination of diverse artistic and not artistic elements, to understand emotions, thoughts, and reflections through physical articulation. We discover the body as a communicator, as a multifaceted element in a messed world and in an incomprehensible universe because as long as we are here we all share the same physical expression: the body. In times of instant communication, we recognize the potency of our brains and nerve nets and the possibilities of connectivity and communication in all natural spheres including the human.

Considering these aspects, it’s clear, that the concept of the social body is complex and touches spheres which are not immediately negotiable. As our bodies are an intersection between nature and culture and intertwined in societies, we can understand that the importance of our bodies is going beyond being vehicles of mind and sources of sensations. The social body interlaces the individual relation to society and the individual as society. Therefore, is the individual a smaller version of society and society an extended version of the individual. Consequently, are individual behaviors inscribing society on a larger time scale, individual activities are describing the social context and re-texting it depending on awareness.