Exercises on Foucault

2016

Installation: linen curtain, exercise book, paper on the wall and sound

Variable Dimensions

The starting point of the artwork is the text "Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison" by Michel Foucault. I read it and I tried to embody the text, starting from a biographical data: I am a correct left-handed person. So, during the period of Residence, I did a constant and regular exercise to recover the use of my left hand by transcribing parts of the text connected to body regulation and control. I produced a notebook with childish writing and I fixed my first attempt of left writing to the wall above my working desk. Slowly, the room in which I slept and worked started to look like a convent cell, a boarding school room or a prison, environments explored by Foucault's text. On the access I put a curtain, on which I embroidered the sentence "The only really important ceremony is that one of exercise”, extrapolated from the text. To make the exercise perceivable, I used the sound of both right-handed and left-handed writing in a distorted crescendo that highlights the conflict and the continuous alternation of body parts in search of a relationship between them. The wooden floor absorbed and diffused the vibrations with the soles.