Bodyscapes

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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. We look forward to lectures and exchange with our guests: 11.03.2026: Chan Sook Choi 22.04.2026: Mai Ling 29.04.2026: Katrin Hornek This PGS is a collaborative seminar in which students from the Master's programme in Art and Cultural Studies and students of Fine Arts will work together to develop their own artistic works and an exhibition. This will be based on their theoretical, art-historical and discursive engagement with the subject area. The exhibition will be on display at theAngewandte Festival in 2026. The seminar language is German, but English texts will be read. Due to the limited number of participants, we ask interested students to briefly describe their interests and motivation in 3-5 sentences, which should be sent to georgia.holz@uni-ak.ac.at and anita.hosseini@uni-ak.ac.at by 28 February 2026.

Lecturers