In “Body-Hegemonies 2017: An Experimental Transfer”, we were concerned with understanding and making transparent the themes of epistemic violence and hegemonic orders that have resulted from the legacy of colonialism and slavery, as the hidden, ambivalent, broken flipside of modernity and enlightenment. Our aim was to examine the Eurocentric logic of dehumanisation and processes of exclusion from the perspective of bodies and their embeddedness in these hegemonic structures. 

We asked ourselves the following preliminary questions: “What are the bodily traces of the history of modernity”? “How is history and memory inscribed in which bodies or body structures”? “What were/are some of the possible strategies of negation for these historically inscribed bodies (or body parts – human remains) in the past and the present”? To explore these questions, a one week laboratory was held in which 6 artists/scientists were brought together for 4 days in the woods of Remscheid, Germany. Each participant held three Skype conversations with a remote partner of their choice on the topic of body discourses and the historic and contemporary institutions and disciplining mechanisms that impact on bodies.

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The participants presented aspects of their conversations to the group as a whole. These individual performative responses were then worked into a “performative score” that was presented to the public on the six day of the laboratory (Saturday, November 4th, 2017). The opening of the laboratory to a public viewing was flanked by a mini-symposium on the topic of body-hegemonies. Thisprovided the expanded discursive field within which to locate and understand the artistic explorations.

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The final goal is to hold an international performative conference in 2020/2021 at the University of Cologne: “Epistemic Violence – Colonial Aphasia: Challenges of Decolonizing the University” (Working title).