Extravagant Bodies Festival

12/12/2007—ongoing

Extravagant Bodies is an international triennial art festival initiated in 2007. The festival deals with social demarcations of normal and pathological, be they concerned with corporeality, appearance, behaviour, sexuality or life style.

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Extravagant Bodies Festival has developed from Kontejner's Project Hospital and since its very beginning it dealt with the politics of normality. What is considered normal (as well as what is not) is ideologically determined and deeply rooted into the structures of society. The existence of the other and the different, especially in the context of the body, generates negative identification, social exclusion, fear and hatred. Society percieves the body outside the norm as useless, or insufficiently usefull and productive - a burden to the society. People with physical disabilities, with mental and intelectual disabillities, LGBTQ communities are seen as non-productive and non-reproductive, and pose a threat to the easy flow of productive work. They endanger society's structures and drain its resources, bringing no value or surplus value to the socitey.

This body that is different and extravagant is at the centre of the creative work of artists presented at the festival. The authors are very often part of the minorities and marginalized communities, and in their work they deal with what determines them as different from the others. Without the fear of social critique and judgement, they invite the audiences to look at what usually lays hidden from our gaze, to stare and touch, to feel the cathartic impact of this voyeur moment.

The festival thus critically examines the soical, political, cultural and economical position and identities of extravagant bodies, minds and communities. It is important to point out that these artworks speak from the very condition itself, and have no patronising, humanitarian or rehabilitation role. They are developed around the very existence of the social norms and taboos, and take into account the much wider framework of borderlines and demarcations, institutionalization and stigmatization.

The Festival has so far been dedicated to physical disabilities, mental and intellectual disabilities, social and individual implications of old age, and crime - sanctioning, recognizing and punishing the socially unacceptable behaviour.