How visible can the body be?
Partially visible?
Or partially concealed?
How sanitized can the body be?
How uncontrolled, unmoderated, uncompliant can the body be?
The institution censors.
What may be seen.
When it may be seen.
How it may be seen.
Under what conditions it may be seen.
The institution claims it as care,
As safety,
As procedure.
But procedure becomes obedience.
Administrative authority becomes doctrine.
Supervision becomes surveillance.
Hierarchy stabilizes itself through rules.
Rules stabilizes itself through fear.
Fear stabilizes itself through apology.
But how apologetic can the body be?
For existing without permission.
The institution decides which bodies may be seen without waming,
And which bodies must be pre-labeled, pre-registered, pre-digested, pre-sanitized.
The institution decides which bodies may enter the room unannounced,
And which bodies must knock, must wait, must ask, must apologize.
The institution and the body are not separate.
The institution is built upon the management of bodies.
The institution writes policy.
The body becomes the site where policy is enforced.
The institution enacts governance.
The body is what must be govemed.
The institution calculates risk.
The body is the risk.
The institution defines harm.
The body is defined by hamm.
The institution speaks in neutral language, bureaucratic language, procedural language.
The institution speaks of thresholds.
How much blood is allowed.
How much skin is tolerated.
How much desire is exposed.
How much pain is endured.
The institution assumes a delicate viewer.
A fragile viewer.
A viewer who must be wamed, cushioned, buffered.
A viewer who must never be startled without consent.
A viewer who cannot construct their own thresholds.
The viewer is an invention.
A justification.
A fiction.
Viewers must be prepared.
Viewers must be warned.
Viewers must acknowledge responsibility.
The space itself becomes a disciplinary mechanism.
Stand here.
Read that.
Face this direction.
Enter.
But only enter after the body has been deemed safe for consumption.
Architecture keeps the body contained.
Architecture directs the eye.
Architecture organizes sensation.
Doors.
Rooms.
Stairs.
Corridors.
Space is a policing tool.
Signs.
Amrows.Boundaries marked in tape.
Restricted areas.
Authorized personnel only.
Directional flow.
The door must remain closed.
The room must be monitored.
The area must be secured.
A containment facility.
A separate room.
Behind a door.
Behind a waming.
Behind compliance.
The institution isolates the body.
The institution quarantines the body.
The institution segregates the body.
The institution becomes sterile.
Sanitized.
Purified.
How naked can the body be?
The institution tolerates the symbolic nude, the aesthetic nude, the art-historicallysanctioned nude.
But not nakedness that exposes more than skin.
A body in motion, a body in contact, a body in heat, carries too much charge.
Too much agency.
Too much refusal.
The body is lived, not curated.
The body is touched, not interpreted.
The body is experienced, not re-presented.
How much desire can the body have?
How much desire can the body make visible, without being deemed porn?
The body is not to please.
Why should the body tiptoe around you?