The Body as an Archive

We are used to thinking of the body as an image — beautiful, strong, expressive. Contemporary art proposes a different perspective: the body as an archive. As a carrier of memory, trauma, social control, and lived experience that cannot be fully expressed in words.

At Thursday’s workshop, we will discuss why in the 21st century artists increasingly stop depicting the body and instead record it as a document of the era.

In the theoretical part, we will examine key artistic practices:

• Marcel Duchamp — why Nude Descending a Staircase turned into abstraction.
• Marina Abramović — the body as limit, endurance, and testimony.
• Sophie Calle — the body, absence, and the personal archive.
• Teresa Margolles — the body as a trace of violence and social reality.
• Ana Mendieta — the disappearance of the body and the trace instead of the image.
• Hito Steyerl — the vulnerability of the body under conditions of digital control.

We will also talk about the shift from performance to archival practice and why today the body increasingly functions as evidence rather than metaphor.

In the practical part, we will not “make art” but work with documentation.

Through smartphone photography and a small bodily performance, participants will explore fragments, gestures, tensions, states, and vulnerable zones — without posing or aestheticization. What matters is not the result, but attention to the process and one’s own presence. The performance will be recorded as a trace, not as a “presentation.”

This session is for those interested in contemporary art, performance, and archival practices, as well as actors, directors, and artists. No artistic experience is required; it is suitable for beginners. All that is needed is a desire to explore a new way of artistic thinking.

The session will be led by Leni Smoragdova (@smoragdova_lessons) — Transaction Art artist and educator.