Performing the Public Body: Collectively Authored Participatory Performance, Democracy and Institutional Politics

Performing the Public Body investigates democracy as a corporeal practice experimenting with participatory, collectively authored performance processes for empowering democracy in different institutional set-ups. Starting from Rebecca Schneider’s definition of politics as appearing ‘to others as others appear to me’ (2017: 51), democracy is seen as a public bodily practice closely intertwined with performance. Looking at democracy as the corporeal expression of collectivity means paying attention to elements that otherwise stay neglected in politics, such as the performativity of bodies’ social movement, use of language, their emotions, etc. The project takes place in two independent but closely interconnected lines: (a) an artists-based line of research, taking place in Royal Conservatoire Antwerp and Fontys Academy of the Arts where, together with students, we co-create performative tools for practicing democracy as corporeal practice; (b) a socially-engaged line of research, with the involvement of medium-sized communities (30-45 people) connected to institutional contexts of democracy (such as political parties, municipalities, etc.), where we test how such performative tools could impact those contexts. In both cases, project participants co-design performative processes (that is, through speaking, moving, thinking) able to generate democratic coexistence through the body.