Ephemeropteræ 2017/#6 –Astrida Neimanis

Ephemeropteræ 2017/#6 –Astrida Neimanis July 7, 2017 TBA21–Augarten, Scherzergasse 1A, 1020 Vienna, Austria In her performative lecture How to Become a Body of Water (Lessons in Hydrofeminism) Astrida Neimanis asks what it takes to live our bodies as bodies of water. Flowing from the philosophy of Luce Irigaray to the artwork of Rebecca Belmore, from lungfish to aquatic apes, from queer gestation to travelling breast milk, she also asks: How, and why, is this a feminist question? “Blood, bile, intracellular fluid; a small ocean swallowed, a wild wetland in our gut; rivulets forsaken, making their way from our insides out, from watery womb to watery world: we are bodies of water. As such, we are not on the one hand “embodied” (as a cultural or philosophical concept) and on the other hand “made mostly of water” (as a biological fact). We are both, inextricably and at once—composed of wet matter, yet also aswim in the discursive flocculations of embodiment as an idea, a politics, an ethics. We live at the site of exponential material meaning where embodiment meets water. Given the various water crises that our planet currently faces, from drought and freshwater shortage to wild weather, floods, and chronic contamination, this meaningful mattering of our bodies is also an urgent question of worldly survival.” More information: https://www.tba21.org/#item--ephemero...