When the body says Yes, immersive video experience, Dutch Pavilion, Venice 2022
I walked into a cavernous cathedral lined with pillows and cushions built into the floor. A movie played overhead and light filtered through stained glass windows on the other three walls. Bead and string tapestry curtains hung floor-to-ceiling. Visitors rested in softness. Onscreen, a group of a dozen or more people lay together and poured clear oil over one another’s naked bodies. I wondered (not happily) if an orgy was being filmed.
Looking closer, I saw not eroticism but gentleness, like a mother to a child, a skilled masseuse, a loved one, or a dear friend. A sense of trust and safety filled the room. Onscreen people began to discuss boundaries: the empowerment found in clarifying what you do or do not want, the joy of not being forced into anything you don’t want to do, and the shared pleasure of honoring yours and another’s boundaries and requests. I began to wonder about lines around sensuality and, what makes sex sex? Not always nakedness not always touch; boundaries make sex sex. Boundaries being crossed agains your will make it, whatever it is, wrong.
Onscreen brings us back to the naked group. In the center, a woman with what would be a disability in another context was surrounded by attention, acceptance, and honor. Racial minorities next shared the center space with the young, the old, the thin, the fat, everyone had special honor in appropriate proportion. Bodies that daily are shamed “out there,” here onscreen were beautiful and complete.
Without the cushions and the lying down, and without a friend’s assurance that the film was worth seeing, I might not have stayed. I’m glad I did. I left the venue feeling clean, refreshed, comforted, rejuvenated, healed without having known beforehand what needed healing. I felt loved and honored as a being, a woman, a person who may or may not be accepted by general society. Here was welcome from the greater community of humanity and compassion for the bodies’ wisdom as we are.
Find more information here: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/458555/melanie-bonajowhen-the-body-says-yes/