The term bodyscape is an interdisciplinary concept that views the body not as an isolated entity, but as a landscape or space of interactions shaped by social, political, ecological and media influences.

In essence, it involves considering the body as terrain, permeated by power relations, inscriptions, boundaries and circulations. Similar to the landscape, the body is subject to a spatiotemporal structure and is understood as shaped, mapped, controlled, colonised, predictable and medially representable. This shifts the focus from the body as a subject to the body as a site of political and symbolic confrontation.

While the common understanding of bodyscapes redefines the body through questions of the relational, ecological, political and landscape, this PGS aims to understand the spatial and local landscape as the body, which affects human-world relationality. How do our actions and needs shape the world we live in? What influence do these changes and effects have on us, our self-perception, our knowledge production, our culture of remembrance, our historiography, and our decision-making processes?

In four sections — 1) Digitalisation and Extractivism, 2) Borders and Forensic Mapping, 3) New Animism and the Anthropocene, and 4) Eco-Feminism and Eco-Fascism, we will approach the reverse bodyscapes concept and explore its political, ecological, decolonial and relational potential.

This course is designed for students of art education and fine arts.

Active participation (minimum 80% attendance), development and presentation of an artistic project; research and development of a presentation format (with art education students) for the exhibition at the Angewandte Festival.

Becaus of limited participation I ask for a brief statement of one's own interests and motivation regarding the topic (3-5 sentences),  via Mail until Feb 28.

The course is a collaborative seminar between students of art education and/or fine arts and students of the Master's program in Art and Cultural Studies (course no. S05723), who will develop their own artistic works and a joint exhibition based on theoretical, art historical and discursive engagement with the subject area, which will be shown at the Angewandte Festival 2026.

The seminar will be held in German, most texts will be English though.