The New Subject is a series of four interconnected exhibitions and accompanying public events about the evolving challenges of the body in connection to global biopolitics and technological developments, focusing on the legal, somatic and cognitive dimensions. Initiated by TOK Curators, the project is a two-year collaboration between the curatorial duo and four European art institutions:
Konsthall C (Sweden),
Kunsthal NORD (Denmark),
Oksasenkatu 11 (Finland), and
KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art (Germany). Each participating venue will feature an exhibition co-curated by TOK and local curator(s), addressing global body-related problematics while also acknowledging the specific contexts and challenges of the local communities.
Drawing on the ideas of Achille Mbembe, who argues that today’s societies of control rely on the "manufacture of a new subject that is at once a physiological assemblage, a synthetic and electronic assemblage, and a neuro-biological assemblage," the project aims to decode and expose the repressive and manipulative mechanisms incorporated into various constituents of the contemporary state. By examining the body as a contested site for ideological and political power games, the exhibition series also aims to explore potential modes of existence that defy the coercive machinations of state engineering.
Under the umbrella title
The New Subject, the four exhibitions
The New Subject. Mutating Rights and Conditions of Living Bodies investigate how new medical technologies and biological enhancements impact our bodies and mind and the ways in which governments use policies to control and instrumentalize them. The project also explores how posthuman and post-anthropomorphic discourse is shaping our understanding of the body and its possibilities to navigate the world and the self more consciously.
Konsthall C (June 2 - August 20, 2023, Stockholm) responded to the notion of a sovereign body treated as disposable by corporations and governments. Through various artistic mediums the exhibition explored the ways in which power structures and state apparatuses impact the body, employing legislation as a tool for control, often leading to the violation of rights and freedoms. The participating artists contemplated the utilization of bodies as resources within the context of wars and technological/military/medical experiments, often leading to the exploitation and mistreatment of specific groups of people.
The second exhibition at
Kunsthal NORD (September 29 - November 25, 2023, Aalborg) focused on various aspects of public health and the stigmatization of bodies and minds considered unconventional by the society and social institutions. The exhibition confronted structural disinvestment in public health policy, the history of past medical experiments and the emergence of new diseases due to post-capitalist working and environmental conditions. Presented works addressed the nature of violence, the impact of technological surveillance on personal autonomy and bodily integrity, as well as the exploitation of vulnerable bodies by the pharmaceutical industry. Participating artists focused on bodies and individuals that exist on the fringes of societal and legal "norms" by transgressing the conventional boundaries of gender and human anatomy.
The third exhibition at
Oksasenkatu 11 (April 5 - 28, 2024, Helsinki) explored queer and trans rights, bodies, and experiences specifically in the context of state legal and health policies. It contemplated how current systems and institutional structures often discriminate against and fail to empower those identifying beyond the gender binary. Some of the presented works envisioned diverse possibilities of post-human and non-normative modes of
reproduction, while others critically examined the concepts of desire, otherness, and gender normativity within a sexualized economy or a patriarchal society benefiting from enforcing traditional gender roles and divisions.
The fourth and final exhibition will take place at
KINDL-Center for Contemporary Art (September 14, 2024 - January 25, Berlin, 2025). The exhibition will comprise four thematic dimensions that will overlap and complete each other. The first direction
Human Resources: Bodies in State Machinery will respond to the notion of a sovereign body treated as capital that can be disposed of, spent, and exchanged by power structures in their interests. Another group of works will look at the
Body as Sociobiological Infrastructure affected by contemporary technologies that are aimed at expanding bodily possibilities while contributing to their enhanced control and socioeconomic division. The theme of relationship between the state and an individual in juridical perspective will be presented in a constellation of works
Legal Violence and Embodied Resistance. This chapter of the exhibition will focus on corporeal struggles embodied resistance, where the body also becomes a testimony or an archive of colonial, oppressive and systemic violent processes, while also being a living record of reclaiming justice and acknowledgement.
Another dimension of the exhibition narratives
Perceptions of Presence and Practices of Recognition will explore the theme of normativity, conventionality and transgression of bodily and mental standards. By considering the body as a manifestation of deep emotional and spiritual significance, these works challenge traditional narratives and propose new frameworks for understanding the interconnectedness of physical, emotional, and spiritual experiences that shape our understanding of the body and its possibilities to navigate the world and the self more consciously.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a symposium held at KINDL on
November 23, 2024 with participation of writer and researcher Micha Frazer-Carroll, curator Ulrika Flink, artists Clara Sika Helbo and Anan Fries and more.
