In her block seminar “THE BODIES WE ARE (NOT)”, Antje Velsinger invites students at the Ruhr University Bochum to explore the potential of the human body from a practical and theoretical perspective, to create a variety of possible temporary body images and self-images. 

The starting point for the practical discussion will be the invitation to all seminar participants to name body images with which they do not currently identify, such as plant body, horse body, pleasure body, voice body, body without a face, fighter body, sick body, massive body, destroyed body, etc. 

Based on this collection of bodies (images) that we are not, various choreographic practices and strategies will be tested and developed within the seminar, with which elements of these other body images can be appropriated performatively. In this practical process, associative writing will be used to speculate on possible physical actions, perceptions and desires. Scores are generated from this and performed in space using guided performative methods. How does this practice change the perception of what one’s own body can potentially be? 

The block seminar ties in with topics that Antje Velsinger dealt with as part of her artistic-scientific dissertation “The bodies we are (not). A choreographic research on practicing self-distancing”, which was published by transcript Verlag in February 2024.