The Body is a Movement at Natlab

  • The Body is a Movement at Natlab 

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    Exhibition of The Body is a Movement continues at the Baltan's expo space


    During Dutch Design Week, Baltan and Onomatopee presented the new DDW Gym at Sectie-C. A place to reconnect to and reclaim our bodies. A selection of The Body is a Movement is now presented at Baltan’s expo space in the Natlab building.

    The Body: this collection of organs wrapped in skin, filled with fluids, feelings, and sensations. It is our way to experience and respond to our surroundings, to feel and make sense. It tells us when something is off: when we wake up at night with a rushed heartbeat, our bellies ache from witnessing others' suffering, or our backs hurt from working behind a laptop for too long. While living in capitalist structures, our bodies became vehicles for profit. To be optimised for productivity. To be constantly working. To be efficient and to be quantified. While our basic physical needs, such as sleep, end up as the very last entries of our never-ending to-do lists. Be productive, be active, be beautiful, enhance yourself, walk more, ignore your feelings, keep going. But what about our biological clocks, which know our rhythms and needs? What about the disarming sense of pleasure triggered by flavours, scents or erotic play? These beautiful, astonishing, wondrous bodies of ours, capable of experiencing so much joy and excitement—how can we reclaim them?

    The Gym: our Gym is a space for training and rehearsing other ways to be in and with our bodies. The three selected projects challenge us to feel our bodies and care for them differently.

    I am Different by Cheawon Shin. Set in the future, I am Different shows a rich fusion of identities, transcending categories such as race, gender, nationality, and sexuality, allowing individuals to choose and construct their identities creatively and inclusively. I am Different highlights the concept of pursuing uniqueness and how it can sometimes lead to a sense of emptiness and illustrates this with beautiful visuals, music and dance.

    Touching Matter by Dora Lehy. With Touching Matter you are invited to touch, hold, caress, press, feel the different softness and temperatures of the Touching Tools. Their tactical characters vary in materiality: the warmth of wood, the fleshy resistance of foam, the cool and smooth surface of unfired clay. All leave different sensory memories in the palm of your hand. The round shapes came about through an embodied-making process: by swaddling clay, mimicking a mothering practice, it curled into shape through its own weight and the holding force of the wrap. Touching Matter proposes the potential of a touch-forward culture by bringing tactile awareness in our relations with the material world and ultimately with each other.

    Shape Shifter by Flora Lechner. Shape Shifter deals with the cultivation of the body through fitness culture and questions the obsession with an “ideal” set by society. This project questions whether exercise can become a creative statement rather than a numb addiction. The machine keeps the body in a loop of repetitive, predefined movements. The workout ceases to be a spectacle of the body and becomes a spectacle of action.

    The Body is a Movement is developed by Baltan Laboratories and Onomatopee, and kindly supported by Stichting Cultuur Eindhoven.


    The Body is a Movement @ Natlab | Baltan Laboratories x Onomatopee
    Dates: 8 Nov 2023 – 7 January 2024
    Location: Natlab, Kastanjelaan 500, Eindhoven
    Free entrance | Opening times: Mon – Sat 15:00 – 23:00 / Sun 11:00 – 22:00

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