HANDLING

Overview

Manipulation: Control of the body through disciplinary methods ensures productivity and alienation. The power of the body is diminished politically under disciplinary systems, whose mechanisms are as Foucault “calculated manipulation of its elements, gestures, and their behavior.” Discipline being a tool of shaping bodies under obedience and docillity. From April 25 to June 3 I proposed to myself to take on a performance focusing on docility as recalled daily through my hand where I wrote ‘I lack discipline’. Over the days that followed I reaffirmed my satisfaction with being undisciplined so I decided to complete the performnace. Manipulation is the act of negation of that phrase and docility is action, using this concept one of my hands imposes an almost masturbatory force on the other hand.