Studio Orta

Originally commissioned by La Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, the Modular Architecture Unit formed part of a 40’ dance performance.
The aluminium membrane of the Dome Dwelling, doting many identities, can be detached to reveal individual body-parts symbolised by arm, hood or leg appendages. The dancers form entire suits by developing relationships with each others, so the boundaries between body and architecture dissolve. Orta regards the wearer’s movements as those of a multifaceted mechanism, mirroring Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s theories on the mechanization of the body. In the theory of monadology, Leibniz describes the body not as a machine in itself, but as a mechanism made up of many machines, considering organs and body parts as devices in themselves. A model for expression in contemporary aesthetics, the concept of the monad is viewed in terms of folds of space, movement and time, like the interrelatedness of the body and the Modular Architecture sculptures by Lucy Orta.