Here is a confession. I hit my head all the time. Now, some of you may be thinking that this explains things! But I'm actually quite serious. It's like I tend to think my height just stops at eye level, somehow, and then blammo--I crack my head on something. In fact, once during a tech rehearsal I followed a fellow actor, who I had always assumed was taller than I was, through a steel doorway. He made it through without ducking, and I ended up on the ground with an egg on my head.
I have a similar feeling when I am interacting with computer technology, particularly with a mobile device--like the rest of my body disappears and I am just my eyes and my hands. I wonder if this is a common feeling; given concerns I've heard expressed by others in various yoga and movement classes I've attended over the years, I'd wager that our body awareness, collectively, is fairly non-existent throughout most of our daily lives. By body awareness I don't mean consciousness in the sense of shame or judgmental attitudes towards our own bodies, but a connectedness to how our bodies are actually occupying physical space.
The question of how we occupy physical space seems to be the burning question of the last year. And more particularly, how does our use of social media contribute to our occupation of various spaces? What common threads might exist between phenomena like geocaching and the social justice gatherings happening across the US and in scattered locations abroad, beyond the use of GPS technology? How do these forms relate to earlier cultural memes of youthful unrest, for example, Happenings and performance art? What similar strategies are employed? What ideological differences might arise if we were to look closely at the performative practices of today's occupiers and last generation's performance artists, especially as they relate to the body as a medium of expression? To what extent are media descriptions of this expression of today's zeitgeist haunted by the ghosts of earlier movements, and does the use of mobile technology by occupiers heighten or diminish feelings of cultural deja vu?
