VIRTUAL Barcelona
Abstract
The Body Situated in Space explores the impact of spatial language on the politics of othering within the built environment. The study investigates the racialization of the human body, its figure, and its representations within the architectural surroundings of several cities in the state of Tennessee, United States. Racialization cannot be separated from the settings in which it occurs, as it exists as a construct lodged within the body and everyday settings. The context of Tennessee cities consists of parameters that tether narratives of the present to contested pasts, which shapes its current-day racial demographics like a gradient of black to white across the state. Historically and within the present-day United States, human environments have operated as tools for segregation and assimilation at the individual and collective scales. Architectural constructs play an integral yet overlooked role in formulating the cultural experiences and social identities within this complex duality and its reverberating implications. Physical surroundings orchestrate the body’s movements and engagements, and the body derives the design of the space both literally and theoretically. An expansion of this notion includes the collective body as a civil entity and depicts the relationship between communities and their collective resources. The body, its racialization, and the ensuing labels are inherently physical and concurrently spatial. Hence, the paper elucidates the symbiotic relationship between the built environment of Tennessean cities and experiences and narratives of the human body situated in space. It gauges the body’s placement and representation from two scales: the individual and the collective.
Rana Abudayyeh is an Associate Professor and the Robin Klehr Avia Professor of Interior Architecture at the College of Architecture and Design, University of Tennessee. Abudayyeh’s work is situated at the intersection of digital representation and social activism through design, employing these logics towards architectural trajectories rooted in a site-based approach. Abudayyeh is a licensed architect in her native country, Jordan, where she is currently examining spatial constructs and societal frameworks in refugee camps.
Felicia Francine Dean is an Assistant Professor of Interior Architecture at the College of Architecture and Design, University of Tennessee. Her scholarship investigates connections between spatial narratives, identity, interior objects and histories, culture, materiality, analog and digital craft, space, and place. Her project, Perceptions of Misconceptions: Intersecting Stone and Fabric Material Identities, is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Dean’s scholarship has received prestigious residencies and exhibitions. Her work is in the Museum for Art in Wood’s permanent collection in Philadelphia, PA, and within prominent private collections.