Cruising Corpoliterate Art Mediation. Reflections on the Mediation Program of Adina Pintilie’s ”You are Another me. A Cathedral of the Body”

Abstract

The study1 contextualises Adina Pintilie ́s recent work within the framework of corpoliteracy. To accomplish this, I introduced the concept of corpoliteracy as proposed by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, followed by my own expansion of the term as it applies to educational practices in art institutions. Body-semiotics and body- epistemologies will serve as entry points into a corpoliterate analysis of Pintilie’s work. This is a partial analysis that focuses on the body as a site for learning and unlearning but cannot cover all aspects of the multi-year, multi-media research conducted by Pintilie and her team. First, I chose an educational perspective, informed by recent methodologies and practices of museum education and artistic research, which are founded on practices of inclusion. Nevertheless, this perspective intersects with political, aesthetic, social, and institutional factors. Therefore, this approach is effective in terms of describing an artwork that manifests in domains before or beyond language. Second, I explored institutions as “social power plants” in order to examine how Pintilie’s practice relates to theories of radical museology. By applying the lens of corpoliteracy to Pintilie’s work as well as to the mediation practices of its exhibitions, the artistic quality and societal potency of the work can be addressed. Simultaneously, her artistic vision contributes to the expansion of corpoliteracy as a theoretical framework by continually challenging the institutions the projects manifest in. In the final section, I reflected on the mediation programme for Pintilie’s work, “You are another me. A Cathedral of the Body”, which attempted to put the aforementioned theory into practice.