The Journal of Somaesthetics  No. 1, 2015 4

Introduction to the Journal of Somaesthetics

Somaesthetics  is an interdisciplinary research project devoted to the critical 
study and meliorative cultivation of the experience and use of the living body (or 
soma) as a site of sensory appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-stylization. An 
ameliorative discipline of both theory and practice, somaesthetics seeks to enrich 
not only our discursive knowledge of the body but also our lived somatic experience 
and performance; it aims to improve the meaning, understanding, efficacy, and 
beauty of our movements and of the environments to which our actions contribute 
and from which they also derive their energies and significance. To pursue these 
aims, somaesthetics is concerned with a wide diversity of knowledge forms, 
discourses, social practices and institutions, cultural traditions and values, and 
bodily disciplines that structure (or could improve) such somatic understanding 
and cultivation, and it is therefore an interdisciplinary project, in which theory 
and practice are closely connected and reciprocally nourish each other. It is not 
limited to one theoretical field, academic or professional vocabulary, cultural 
ideology, or particular set of bodily disciplines. Rather it aims to provide an 
overarching theoretical structure and a set of basic and versatile conceptual tools 
to enable a more fruitful interaction and integration of the very diverse forms of 
somatic knowledge currently being practiced and pursued. There is an impressive, 
even overwhelming abundance of discourse about the body in many disciplines 
of contemporary theory and commercial enterprise. But such somatic discourse 
typically lacks two important features. First, a structuring overview or architectonic 
that could integrate their very different discourses into a more productively 
coherent or interrelated field. It would be useful to have a broad framework (which 
does not mean a unified, highly consistent system) that could connect, for example, 
the discourse of biopolitics to the therapies of bioenergetics, the neuroscience of 
hand gestures to their aesthetic meaning in Nõ theatre. The second feature lacking 
in most academic discourse on embodiment is a clear pragmatic orientation — 
something that the individual can clearly employ or apply to his or her life in terms 
of disciplines of improved somatic practice. Somaesthetics offers a way to address 
both these deficiencies.
 As an interdisciplinary project, somaesthetic research cannot fit neatly 
into the standard disciplinary journals of academic scholarship. It therefore 
requires a journal of its own in which somaesthetic research on different topics 
and from diverse disciplines can come together and find a common readership 



The Journal of Somaesthetics  No. 1, 20155

for productive, critical dialogue that will advance the somaesthetic project. The 
journal will begin by publishing two issues a year with each issue focusing on a 
specific topic. We have chosen an online format because this allows more freedom 
in the use of visual images and audiovisual clips. This first issue of the Journal of 
Somaesthetics deploys this freedom in its focus on Somaesthetics and the Visual 
Arts. Reflecting somaesthetics deep concern for practice and for a transcultural 
global perspective, this issue of the Journal includes dialogues with three important 
contemporary artists whose practice is internationally renowned and who stem 
from three different continents.  
 We hope you enjoy this first issue of the Journal. We are grateful to Aalborg 
University Press for hosting the Journal. If you are interested in participating further 
in the somaesthetics research project, you may wish to join the Somaesthetics 
Google group. To do so write to bodymindculture@fau.edu

mailto:bodymindculture@fau.edu

	h.rb40heju30b8
	h.gjdgxs
	h.gjdgxs
	h.gjdgxs
	Introduction to the Journal of Somaesthetics
	Introduction to Issue Number 1: 
	Olafur Eliasson
	Interdisciplinary approaches and 
	Stelarc 
	On the body as an artistic material
	Pan Gonkai 
	Somaesthetics and Its Consequences in Contemporary Art
	Throwing the Body Into the Fight: 
	The Body as an Instrument in Political Art
	Metaphysics, Corporeality and Visuality: 
	A Developmental and Comparative Review of the Discourses on Chinese Ink Painting
	Representation and Visual Politics of the Extreme Body
	Embodied Creation and Perception in Olafur Eliasson’s and Carsten Höller’s Projects.