Kūnas kaip subjektyvi patirtis: jo vientisumas ir pažeidžiamumas kūrybinėje praktikoje

ENReferring to Alain Badiou’s notion of subjective body I present my art projects, highlighting the importance of personal participation – being present in a particular place and taking its specific traits into account, and using synesthetic sensibility and body receptors to construct the meanings that allow for the experience of the world as a whole. I discuss two collaborative projects: a severalmonths assistance work for traditional healer Mohammed Khasim (2009, Mysore, India), and collaboration with Haitian woman Rosé Marie Paul in her living environment, a so-called ‘ghetto’ (2011, Port-au-Prince, Haiti). These activities demanded absolute and unconditional engagement and an open dialogue with the community. During the active engagement with reality an outward environment impacts on the inner self, which in turn searches for ways to manifest. The body is a certain supple mediator that absorbs the environment in order to operate upon it. The experience and meanings created through participation gain social importance, and to illustrate this I mention other examples of my collective work: regular meetings with a group of people with disabilities (2004– 2008, Bochum, Germany) and a project with a group of teenagers (2013, Kaunas, Lithuania). My text on the body as subjective experience aims to highlight the vulnerability and fragility of the body (applying the ideas by Judith Butler and Paulo Freire), and to examine the body and life of the other through my own creative work.While preparing this essay I found myself in the middle of polemics on gender equality that involved the Vilnius Academy of Arts. It brought out certain aspects of the vulnerability issue I was researching on and exposed endemic problems in higher education institutions in Lithuania, in particular concerning the behavior of the academic staff in relation to each other. At the end of my text I comment on this with the expectation to instigate a discussion on gender, equality, and how we can impact on these issues.