Between body and world. Bruce Nauman’s Corridors and the Metaphor of Control. A Walk through the Exhibition with Teresa Macrì

The art critic and historian Teresa Macrì takes visitors on a walk, titled “Between Body and World,” through the exhibition of Bruce Nauman on Thursday 1 December 2022 at 7 PM, as part of the Public Program.

“I’d like to focus the tour of Bruce Nauman‘s Neons Corridors Rooms on the relationship between the body (and thus subjectivity) and the social arena (and thus the world), pointing to the tension that he has managed to capture in them ever since his first studies in the late 1960s. Here we see his corridors as psychic devices within the control systems in our contemporary world. The corridors, which are themselves to some extent metaphors of structures of domination and prohibition, overturn the traditional relationship between work and viewer, making the latter an actor and disorienting him/her in an unsettling manner. By making an epochal conceptual leap, Nauman sweeps away the reality of contemplation in favour of experience,” says Teresa Macrì.

The public can listen to the conference through headphones, while moving freely around the exhibition space. The event takes place around the works on display, in order to explore the aspects of Nauman’s practice that closely relate to the interactions between private and public space, and between intimacy and control. The talk also focuses on an analysis of the perceptual and experiential sensations that Bruce Nauman’s installations arouse in viewers.

Teresa Macrì is an art critic and writer, with a focus on visual culture. Her latest publications include Slittamenti della performance. Vol. 2. Anni 2020-2022 [Performance slippage. Vol. 2. Years 2020-2022] (Postmedia Books, Milan, 2022); Io mi manifesto [I manifest myself] (Gli Ori, Pistoia, 2022); Slittamenti della performance, Vol. 1, Anni 1960-2020 [Performance slippage. Vol. 1. Years 1960-2020] (Postmedia Books, Milan, 2020); Pensiero discordante [Discordant thought] (Postmedia Books, Milan, 2018); Fallimento [Bankruptcy] (Postmedia Books, Milan, 2017); Politics/Poetics (Postmedia Books, Milan, 2014). Macrì teaches Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. She is a contributor to the newspaper Il Manifesto.

Free admission upon reservation.