‘Everyone’s quick to blame the alien’
Aeschylus, The Suppliants (490BC)
What is it like to become a rock? How does it feel to operate an attack drone? Who do I become when I forget, and what becomes of humanity when we all forget? The alien body is a body different than mine. It is a body outside my own, perhaps one I do not understand or control. Sometimes obvious and confronting, other times ghost-like, passing unrecognized or simply removed from sight and mind. But it influences me, and I influence it. Perhaps it is invasive; perhaps it is transformative; perhaps it is just a state of mind, a strategy of alienation, a tactic of apprehension. Perhaps the alien is my own body, with its microbial microcosms that outweigh my human cells. Or perhaps it is simply the irreconcilable paradox of being an individual within a mass, within humanity, within the world, within myself. By remaining in known territory I become static. By becoming the alien my perspective broadens, grows and evolves – and so does the world around me.
With ALIEN BODIES, we want to seek, confront and empathize with the alien, whether that is our environment, ecosystem, other organisms (animals, plants, microorganisms), objects and matter, man-made technological aliens (robots, AIs and our algorithmic fabrications), the alienness of political, economical and cultural structures, or alien human beings in places near or remote who have become the invisible or undecipherable other. Especially in today’s climate, we feel it is of particular importance to address the idea of Alienness. People, communities, and nations are turning more and more solipsistic, enclosing themselves into bubbles of kinship and pushing away what is different, what is unknown.
We recognize that first and foremost the notion of the Alien is related to fear. From the extraterrestrial, to the illegal aliens that ‘invade our countries’, to our fear of robots and AI, this is a common thread. While this fear is deeply human, as Aeschylus’ verse from 2500 years ago makes apparent, Modern Body Festival’s approach aims to overcome it. Our goal is to move beyond fear, to a place where we can accept the alien, try to understand it and identify with it. The goal is symbiosis and collaboration, not strife, nor annihilation, nor neglect. In this process, we see becoming the alien as a crucial strategy for learning how to interact with the world and understanding ourselves and our context.