Lia Garcia on ReDirecting: East 2020

  • The performative root of my pedagogical action is tenderness, because for me everything has to step over the skin. You have to feel the experience of trans people, touching us; what do I touch when I’m touching you? What is touching us? Is a caress a radical teaching of affective proximity? How do we gain knowledge from this body? Through affections? What happen when trans people teach with the skin?
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  • TENDERNESS IS REVOLUTION AND METHAMORPHOSIS
    • The experience of tenderness has been denied to us through history, though tenderness is an emotional space allowing us to receive an emotional look at ourselves through the eyes of others.
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  • POWER OF THE VOICE
    • The world pandemic has made us isolate ourselves. Our bodies are subjugated by distance, not allowing us to have affective encounters with the skin. All the health policies in place are so strong to our bodies, meaning touch, hugs and kisses, as to be risky in themselves. This virus has taken away the chance of looking into each other’s eyes. The sound our voices allows us to cross any border, gain access into the spaces now closed. Our voices, just like the coronavirus, can travel through space and time and also getting in to the body.

Participants of the seminar are answering two questions: what was their contribution to the seminar and how has taking part in the seminar influenced their perception of the online realm.
Photo: Ania Bystrowska

Lia Garcia on Re–Directing: East 2020