Marianna

The modern visual world is being transformed through the intensification of images concerning our bodies. We are being nudged out of our biological bodily practices and our traditional (historical) life cycle as we are encouraged to reshape and exercise ourselves to maintain bodies that would have naturally been produced by lifestyle. Will this present us with a different type of artifact in our future? As our bodies transition from a "means of production" to "the production itself" we are confronted with "a progressively unstable body." We produce more and more items while we emphasize the idea of less and less in the body. How will mass production affect what we find in the future?

Enhancing media photos can be connected to the idea of the Greek ephebe as well as traditional African idealism found in the sculptures of Nok culture (2500 - 800 BP) and of Ife (800 - 500 BP). In Ife in particular the sculptures, often used during ritual ceremonies and festivals, depicted an idealized form that was free of age-ing, blemish, and vulnerability. The use of elongated necks, beads and adornments were used to mark status in an individual and the incredibly smooth, naturalistic forms suggest that the people who made the works were interested in a specific type of idealized body. In a modern culture that places most of its visual emphasis on digital means, will future generations have to crack our code so that they will be able to access a large portion of our cultural identity?

Posted at Feb 07/2010 09:44PM:
Michelle:

what kind of items are you referring to that are being produced more and more? mass production is a broad subject: i'm not sure if i agree/understand what you are saying, i think that technology today is becoming smaller and smaller, more feminine, which relates to smaller, thinner, ideal bodies.

Posted at Feb 08/2010 12:19AM:
marianna: Hi! Sorry for the confusion. I was referring to mass production in the sense that we are creating more and more items to replace rather than repair the old. I am also referring to mass production within a larger time frame/post industrial revolution. It is only in the past few years that we have begun to reintroduce environmentally friendly design on a larger scale. Although technology is becoming smaller physically, it doesn't necessarily mean that less objects are being produced.

Posted at Feb 23/2010 01:24PM:
omur: This is a very interesting discussion. I think Marianna is especially referring to massive production of the imagery of the body that tends to transform it into a representational entity. The power of visual representation perhaps is increasingly striking in mass production and easy dissemination of those imagery- which then preconditions how our bodies should look like: the body becomes a site of perpetual improvement based on some mediatic ideals. However as in Marianna's Greek and African examples, similar body idealizations operated also in pre-modern contexts.