ALICE WEBER

Department of Bodily Affairs

Department of Bodily Affairs is a collection of live and video speculations on the body and the structures that govern it. Existing in relative safety from the violences of colonial-capitalism (being white, cis and without disability), the artist’s body is presented as a site to reconsider hierarchies of skill, visibility and spectacle. Choreographies of slowness, stillness and absurdity explore how the tropes of dance skill might be harnessed to undo, rather than uphold, these hierarchies.

At the same time, this skill is questioned as a technology of feminisation which projects the body as the surface on which patriarchal desire is written. Exploring the hidden erotics of contemporaneity, the body stalls and surrenders, unfolding and backward-rolling, quietly protesting expectations of constant production and consumption. In contrast to the rigidity and incompetency of current governmental operations, the Department is a speculative centre dedicated to issues of care, desire, violence, relating and vulnerability.