Soft Prison was a collective exhibition of six artists, both Finnish and Italian, that took part in the Walk-In Studio Festival in Milan in October 2020.

 

I asked the participating artists to take part in monthly online conversations to reflect on the production of gender inscribed within devices of dominance.

 

The project took place during the COVID-19 lockdown and none of the participants knew each other before, so the first and only contact was through a computer. The conversations formed the basis for the artworks, and four fanzines: Body, Identity, Tool, and Reproduction which contained liberally modified transcripts of these conversations that were available at the exhibition.

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Curatorial statement

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The organic body is memory. Human memory consists of complex links between space, time, and emotion. What we are used to thinking of as identity or gender is a story that our memory creates. Each body and each memory is unique to its own experience, yet we still expect gender to fit into one of two predefined categories. The human body is a central subject of political power and has always been. 

 

And then there is the other body. The one without time and space. A hypothetically extended body without limits or boundaries. The new perfect body, without gender or biological norms, within an alternate reality where code can transform any data into visual or audible. Yet the cold device is the only tactile aspect. 

   

 When the freedom of the physical body has been restricted to one's home and the only way out is digital, the lack of corporeality becomes apparent. In the virtual regime, space is a paradox; it is distorted or nonexistent. But in times of crisis that nonexistent space can become a bond between a group of artists, Italian and Finnish, previously unknown. Through the digital they connect to discuss the issues between the physical body and the digital body, their differences, and possibilities. To ask if technology, used as a tool, can lead to greater understanding or expression. And whether these values can translate or contribute to the liberation of the physical body. 

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For from our rooms, we declare that the physical body does not seize, not while it exists. After all, "contrary to what one might imagine, our health will not come from setting a boundary or from separation, but only from a new understanding of community with all living creatures, from a new sharing with other beings on the planet."