Imagination is seldom taken seriously. It is associated with fantasies and mental trips, but some people already gave us a very different vision. Cornelius Castoriadis in his work “The Imaginary Institution of Society” (1975) reminded us that are precisely these “hidden imaginaries” – that’s how we name them – hardly rationally analyzable, the ones behind our real constructions.

By constructions we understand our institutions, policies, social relations, energy organizations, ecosystems… and these “hidden imaginaries” are also the ones making us see as impossible the alternative constructions that we could envision. These alternatives are possible only changing our “base imaginaries”, the ultimate meanings of our motives of which we seldom become aware – base imaginaries are often “hidden imaginaries.”

The “real imaginary” that this terrible quarantine laboratory offers us now (March 2020- …), is the touch in our skin of what we have been told along many years about climate change, body’s vulnerabilities or un-sustainability of categories of values about bodies that matter and bodies that doesn’t matter. And when I say bodies I include here also the animal and vegetal world, also the mineral and the planetary. Now we look out our windows and the scenery seems unreal… but this is real and it is for everyone without exception.

If we go to the edge of flesh, to the borders of our actions where hidden imageries reside, perhaps we can reassemble them, make them evolve or at least let the existence of some new ones be possible. The bodies have always spoken; but there are times when the clamour is deafening, as it happens during these months. The pandemic is nothing more than a natural dynamic emerging from the loss of biodiversity, the extraction of resources at all costs and the supposed superiority over other organisms that humans have. In these times the hope for me is the SOMATIC REVOLUTION, the development of PANARCHIC BODIES. I do not say woman or man because I say BODIES and I say PANARCHIC because they will be the only ones in which power will be able to emerge equally from each one of them.

We are incarnate beings, and our matter should remember that we have a common origin with the planet and living beings. But it’s not like that. Established imagery misrepresents that reality. And we act accordingly. In such a way that most of our considerations about nature, economy, production and consumption of food or animals and the control we exercise over them seem harmless and innocent. The way we treat other bodies and ours seems innocent to us … if not innocent, at least it seems justified to us. Now that the control of bodies is imposed in an intense way, perhaps we can understand at its root what all this means.

What this means is the evidence of our lack of understanding of the vital dynamics that actually govern the cosmos, our planet, the life heartbeat… all this that even if we know by science or intuition, we have not incorporated into our imaginaries because we prefer to invent others that make our decisions more comfortable and our ideas… we prefer to think small and thus justify ourselves … we have lost these “real imaginaries” and it is time to recover them. Let’s go to the root of what we are:

What is a body?

What does it have to do with the inorganic matter of the planet?

What does it have to do with other living things?

What dynamics and affections arise between each other?

What can a body do? – We owe this question to Spinoza and Deleuze …

Which are the real imaginaries- embodied- that we can build to transform our actions, our policies, our institutions, our architecture, our cities … and to accompany the continuous transformation of our bodies accordingly…?

We have been installed for too long in the fantastic imagination of the world that we have built looking at our navel … it is time to begin to understand that the real imagination is the most powerful tool for change. The laboratory of the real is definitely underway, the SOMATIC REVOLUTION is underway and YOU are part of it.

María Auxiliadora Gálvez. April, 2020

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To answer these questions somatically, we provide you with three experiences. Three experiences that will allow you to navigate the structure of the living … to travel through your body … you just have to follow the instructions … they are something like a microscope or a telescope of body imagery.

If you have participated in our Somatic Laboratory applied to Architecture and Landscape you will surely recognize any of these fragments … but the experience will never be the same.

We invite you to make them and then send us a drawing (of any type; also collage; also photo) or a text (words, phrases, letters)… feel free to combine whatever format able to emerge. This introductory text and the experiences already orient you to the meaning of this common study and research, navigate in this sea as you consider… play with it.

We understand that if you participate you agree to be part of the project research and what you send us may be shown or published associated with it. If this is the case, your authorship will always be shown unless you expressly indicate that you prefer to keep your contribution anonymous.

We advise you to do the experiences distanced in time … each one in its proper moment.

Thank you for being part of THE SOMATIC REVOLUTION.

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Experience 1: Colourful rectangle-… Body Map

(Please, take some time to do this experience. Try not to do it mechanically, but exploring… these instructions are only the basis for your research, you can play with them. The most important thing is your curiosity and your attention about how do you do what you do. You will discover issues about yourself but also about the environment surrounding you)

Lie on your back, close your eyes and feel your contact with the floor. Your arms are long at both sides of your body and the palms of your hands are facing the floor. First of all make a scan of your body image.

In your imagination, with your mind-eye, draw a map. It is the map of your contact with the floor around your shoulder blades. The limits of this map are conformed by a rectangle in the upper part of your back, a rectangle where your shoulder blades can be hosted. The areas where you feel more pressure will be drawn in a more intense colour, the areas where you don’t touch the floor will be left in white, and you can add any intermediate state in between. The catalogue of colours can be freely chosen according to your desires. Can you imagine this map?

Now, extend your right arm long, vertically, perpendicular to the floor with your elbow outstretched. And once there, reach towards the ceiling, go forward, accompanying that movement with an internal rotation of the arm (your thumb would rotate counter clockwise)… and come back so that your shoulder blade touches again the floor. Repeat several times. Once more take off the scapula again with the arm stretched out but do not take it to the maximum, just observe the perception of that action and how far the movement is transmitted. Observe your structure. How is movement organized? How far does it reach? What is doing your head? If you try to reach farther, to the ceiling, without forcing and your legs are loose, could you start rolling your body to the left? Till where does the movement travel?

Can you follow the changes in your colourful back map as you develop this movement?

Give up this action and come back to the original position, lying on your back, with the arms long on the floor at both sides of your body. Check your map, is there any change? If yes, adjust it draw it again with colours…

… Now you can repeat this process with the other arm… when you finish check the map again and compare it with the one you draw at the beginning.

Roll to one side, sit down and stand up. Bring your attention to how do you perceive yourself. How is your body image now? How do you perceive it together with the environment?… walk…

If you want to be part of this research answer the following questions. You can do it with words, pictures or drawings and send them to info@psaap.com THANK YOU! Ü

• Could you describe this experience?
• Which were the most visible perceptions or body parts during the experience? Which ones the most invisible?
• Which body image do you have after the experience? You can include whatever aspects you would like. You can even include areas beyond the limits of your skin, others, or references to the environment.
• Did you find any idea arriving apparently without connection to the experience? Does any imaginary emerge?
• Apart form the body and perceptive experiences associated to this action, would you like to comment any other (architectural, political, social, ecological…)?

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Experience 2: Flexible structure- … A body with variable cast…

(Please, take some time to do this experience. Try not to do it mechanically, but exploring… these instructions are only the basis for your research, you can play with them. The most important thing is your curiosity and your attention about how do you do what you do. You will discover issues about yourself but also about the environment surrounding you)

Lie on your back, close your eyes and feel your contact with the floor. Your arms are long at both sides of your body and the palms of your hands are facing the floor. First of all make a scan of your body image.

Bend your knees, stand your feet and stay with your knees in this position pointing to the ceiling. Along the whole experience the knees will be pointing to the ceiling.

In your imagination draw a rectangle in your front side. The four vertexes are these ones: right hip join, left hip join, left shoulder, right shoulder. Now draw another, equivalent to the previous one but in your backside. This will be in contact both with the floor and with you. You have now two parallel rectangles. If you make vertical lines joining every vertex (the one at the bottom with the one vertically on top) you obtain the volume of a prism.

Visualize those lines; imagine how are they and the space within the prism. Use this information to obtain a clearer image of you.

Organize now your movement in order to lift your right hip from the floor and come back. To do it, press the floor with your right foot, your knees are still pointing to the ceiling. Observe how the prism and both rectangles are deformed. Do it several times observing slowly how do you do this movement and how it is the trajectory of transmission. What happens with the inner volume of the prism and the parts of you that contains? What happens to your contact with the floor? Leave it and observe if there are differences in the rectangles. Do you perceive equally the right and the left side?

Try to do the same again but this time you lift your left hip. Allow your breath to be fluid meanwhile you move. How does the prism change this time?

Lastly, come back with all the points to the floor and next time lift your right shoulder and let it come back. Do it several times changing the speed and the range. Observe your rectangles. Then, do the same only with the left shoulder.

Once you have finish try any combination that you could imagine: to lift the right shoulder and right hip at the same time and come back… to lift left shoulder and right hip and come back… change the rhythm… etc. Play… Just do it observing how do you do it and the transformation happening in your structure of rectangles.

When you have enough, leave it, lengthen your legs and observe again your contact with the floor and the prism… do it still while being lying on your back.

Roll to one side, sit down and stand up. Bring your attention to how do you perceive yourself. How is your body image now? How do you perceive it together with the environment?… walk…

If you want to be part of this research answer the following questions. You can do it with words, pictures or drawings and send them to info@psaap.com THANK YOU! Ü

• Could you describe this experience?
• Which were the most visible perceptions or body parts during the experience? Which ones the most invisible?
• Which body image do you have after the experience? You can include whatever aspects you would like. You can even include areas beyond the limits of your skin, others, or references to the environment.
• Did you find any idea arriving apparently without connection to the experience? Does any imaginary emerge?
• Apart form the body and perceptive experiences associated to this action, would you like to comment any other (architectural, political, social, ecological…)?

*****

Experience 3: A plane dividing the body- a body in fragments…

(Please, take some time to do this experience. Try not to do it mechanically, but exploring… these instructions are only the basis for your research, you can play with them. The most important thing is your curiosity and your attention about how do you do what you do. You will discover issues about yourself but also about the environment surrounding you)

Lie on your back, close your eyes and feel your contact with the floor. Your arms are long at both sides of your body and the palms of your hands are facing the floor. First of all make a scan of your body image.

Bend your knees, stand your feet and stay with your knees in this position pointing to the ceiling. Along the whole experience the knees will be pointing to the ceiling.

Imagine a plane (the median plane) that divides you into two halves (left and right), the plane is perpendicular to the floor… and draw the line of its intersection with you, first along your front side and then along your back side.

That line goes through the centre of your forehead, the axis of your nose, the centre of your lips, runs through the middle of your chin and your throat, passes through the centre of the sternum, passes through your navel, through the centre of the pubic bone and turn around to go through the axis of your coccyx, the central line of your sacrum, goes through your spine, reach the central axis of your neck, your skull and go back through the centre of your forehead after surrounding your head.

Do you perceive clearly every part of that line? Or do you find areas that are invisible to your self-image? Go along that line several times and come back specifically over the parts more difficult to visualize. When you have finished try to have a complete picture of that intersection line.

Now imagine the section that this plane produces in your body. Look at the space in-between the upper section line (front side) and the line of section at the bottom (back side). To explore this section help yourself with the following image: imagine a small ball capable of bouncing. Place the ball on the ground in contact with your skull and let it bounce around inside your section. In this way the ball advances by bouncing inside you and without leaving the plane of the section making a zigzag movement. For example, it begins at the highest part of the contact of your skull with the ground, it detaches itself from the ground to collide with some point of your face and goes back down but lower, towards your neck … thus it continues to advance, going up and down advancing within the area of your section through the rib cage and abdomen. This will give you the dimensions of each part of that section. When you have completed a first scan from the space in the top section of your head to the space below around your belly, go back and check again at each section the distances between your back side and your front side following the intersection with the plane. You can rest whenever you need it.

When you have enough experimentation leave it, and with the awareness of this section, explore the plane that divides you in two with your hands. Put both hands on it, as if it would have consistency (materiality) and you could touch with your right hand the right side of the plane and with your left hand the left side of the plane. The palms of your hands go together without going out of the plane. Observe how that movement is like, move along the plane… and then leave it and rest.

Explore the same thing- the surface of the plane- but this time using your feet. Put both soles in contact with the surface of the imaginary plane… and make some movements without leaving the plane, without stopping touching it… Observe how this movement unfolds… and leave it.

Lengthen your legs and place both arms along your body on the floor observing how is now your body image.

Observe one side and another in your body, left and right. Observe the space on each side of you.

Sit down and stand up. Bring your attention to how do you perceive yourself. How is your body image now? How do you perceive it together with the environment?… walk…

If you want to be part of this research answer the following questions. You can do it with words, pictures or drawings and send them to info@psaap.com THANK YOU! Ü

• Could you describe this experience?
• Which were the most visible perceptions or body parts during the experience? Which ones the most invisible?
• Which body image do you have after the experience? You can include whatever aspects you would like. You can even include areas beyond the limits of your skin, others, or references to the environment.
• Did you find any idea arriving apparently without connection to the experience? Does any imaginary emerge?
• Apart form the body and perceptive experiences associated to this action, would you like to comment any other (architectural, political, social, ecological…)?

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