'Corpus Infinitum': Disorienting Western thinking through film

The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) in Spain is exhibiting Corpus Infinitum, presenting the collaborative film projects of Brazilian artist and philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva, and artist, filmmaker and writer Arjuna Neuman, who is Indonesian-Australian and Jewish-American, and a British national. The films on display at the art museum are informed by the research practices of several philosophers and artists, along with Silva’s position that the world is, in fact, a corpus infinitum; a form of terrain that is rich in complexity, wherein human, geological and other environments are not independent, but rather, deeply entwined phenomenon. The films included in the exhibition are Serpent Rain (2016), 4 Waters – Deep Implicancy (2019), and Soot Breath / Corpus Infinitum (2020), along with Silva and Neuman’s collected archival materials for the same.

Neuman explains to STIR the duo’s commitment to disordering what they see as traditional, western ways of thinking, "I think we try to bring practice and discourse, body and concept, quite close together and even entangle them, and this, of course, is important since in so many words we are trying to intervene into the way knowledge and being have been ordered.”

Certainly, many agree that the current zeitgeist is unsustainable with regard to our approach to the natural world around us and that it may be time to turn to other ways of thinking, in order to better navigate, and perhaps even salvage an increasingly grim future.

Silva tells STIR that the works on display do not so much present alternative modes of existence in an authoritative sense, as much as they invite the viewer to consider different ways of making sense of all that exists around them, and along with this exercise in reassessment, to do both: on the one hand, she says "it is an invitation to denaturalise this mode of existing that has been developed by and in which capitalism thrives; to denaturalise its view of the necessity of violence, in particular against those occupying subaltern positions vis à vis the proper figuring of the modern subject, that is, the one that occupies the colonial, racial, cis heteropatriarchal position of authority.” And, on the other hand, to also consider how aspects of existence such as heat impact our political conditions.

Neuman also weighs in on the duo’s raison d’etre, expressing a desire to play with the existing fundamentals of Western thinking’s core tenets, which have been solidified during the era of colonialism. He provides an example, saying, “One of our first experiments across philosophy and film was the challenge of making a movie without time. Whether or not we succeeded is less important than firstly undermining notions of time, such as its incremental linearity, and with it the many ways time is used exploitatively, and then secondly creating a speculative space inside of the film wherein timelessness is experienced, if only as a glimpse.” He and Silva approach space, light, value, ethics, and life itself similarly, among other onto-epistemic keystones of the Western world’s mental hegemony, as they see it.

The filmmakers consider Corpus Infinitum and the discourse around the exhibition to be a component of their larger practice, at least in parts, such as is the case with the museum not assigning a curator to the programme, and the duo instead writing essays in order to communicate their works and their mission to attendees. There are two such essays, one which is written by Silva, and comments on the current state of anticolonial discourse and struggle, and where it perhaps should be headed, and one by Neuman, which looks at embodied cinema, and what it could be, “if taken seriously.” Neuman reiterates, “In some ways, our film work attempts to do and perform, or put in practice the things we are laying out or calling for in the writing. not as the only way or response, but as an example.” 

Beyond Corpus Infinitum, Silva and Neuman are currently finishing the next of their collaborative films, Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims, which treats wind as its central element to focus on and follow. They plan to premiere this work at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria, in October as an installation. In Neuman's words, “Next, we will make another work for the element of fire. So, we have still quite a lot to do for the next two films. We also have a few book projects in the works that will be companions to the different films and unfold the practice in different ways.” Finally, they also intend to redirect the symposiums that they organise into a more informal ongoing study group or workshop that will collectively develop questions for their craft to untangle. There is plenty to look forward to from the creative duo, for both, audiences that have experienced their works, as well as folks who have not, but nonetheless possess an interest in the discourse of decoloniality.

Corpus Infinitum is on view at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art until October 15, 2023.