BODIES: Art, Architecture & Archaeology, An Interdisciplinary Research Event

As part of BODIES, an interdisciplinary research event curated by NMRG co-leads Dr. Victoria Sharples and Dr. Rebecca Howard, Carla documented the workshops that explored themes of materiality, embodiment, and absence. The event featured a series of presentations and practical sessions that examined the relationship between the body, space, and material culture. Professor Cordelia Warr presented research on the Visual Culture of Stigmata in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, while Dr. Lenore Thompson explored anthropological absences and non-destructive material analysis of Roman bronze casts using X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry. Dr. Xristina Penna facilitated a participatory workshop responding to Morgan Meyer’s article, Placing and Tracing Absence: A Material Culture of the Immaterial (2012), investigating bodily-spatial relationships. Dr. Rebecca Howard and Dr. Victoria Sharples led a clay workshop titled The Building of Bodies, where participants followed step-by-step instructions from a disembodied ChatBot (ChatGPT) to construct bodies using slabs and coils in a New Materialist approach.

Funded by the University of Derby’s AHE Fund, BODIES provided a dynamic space for critical discussion and creative exploration. My photographic documentation captured the interaction between participants, the tactile engagement with materials, and the evolving discourse surrounding the human form.