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Bare Life Living Unit map / Gent

exhibition>

works>
.Marie Hélene de Canniere
.Wouter Cox
.Jelle Laverge
.Stephanie Leblon
.Tinka Pittoors
.Rob de Schutter &Sven Tassaert
.Marie van Praag
.Karel Verhoeven

Arts Center Vooruit, Gent, April 04-10 2005

Tutors> Emil Hrvatin, Peter Senk
Production Manager> Esther Maas
Participants> Marie Hélene de Canniere, Wouter Cox, Jelle Laverge,Stephanie Leblon, Tinka Pittoors, Rob de Schutter, Sven Tassaert , Marie Van Praag, Karel Verhoeven

WORKSHOP CONCEPT

Since the publication of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer and particularly it’s English translation, we are witnessing an ongoing debate on the notion of “bare life”. The debate, which has been situated in the context of law and juridical questions, became political debate par excellence in the field of human rights and biopolitics. Speaking in simple biopolitical terms, “bare life” refers to body’s mere “vegetative” being, separated from the particular qualities, the social and historical attributes that constitute individual subjectivity.

Agamben analyzes the notion of “bare life” in concentration camp, showing us that the camp is actually a biopolitical paradigm for the contemporary West. The camp is a state of exception, a state of emergency upon which the entire political and legal system of the First World is built. The camp is always a parallel system, literally a 'para'-system, an exterritorialized site, where the usual legal system does not apply. And yet, exactly as such, it is a place or even a non-place which the regular legal system can turn to any time.

We would like to continue the debate placing it into field of individual reflection as well as into spatial manifestations of the concept of “bare life”. The workshop will be focused on 3 main levels:

- individual understanding and definition of “bare life”
- analysis of the particular urban entity (Gent) and mapping points of “bare life” in the city according to an individual definition (producing a new map of Gent)
- prototype of “bare life” living unit - minimum for a human existence

The city of Gent is an interesting urban structure to analyze spatial manifestations of “bare life”. As many other cities in the First Woirld it is a place of shrinking public space. It is a city with a lot of temporary migration (students) which create dynamic life style. It is also the city of tensions between capital, tradition and alternative lifestyles

The aim of the workshop is to generate individual reflection of the concept of “bare life” and its material functioning through public language, everyday ideology as well as spatial manifestations of power relations. As an introduction to the workshop and as a methodological tool, participants are invited to answer the questionnaire on bare life.

Invited are different profiles (economists, hackers, webmasters, net artists, urbanists, architects, engineers, technologists, artists, programmers, sociologists, philosophers, theoreticians) who would be interested to combine analytic and creative interdisciplinary work.