Grounded Bodies, Flying Plasma

The Liquid Regime of Bodily Fluids

Sick Architecture, CIVA, Brussels

Mayrit 2024 Madrid Biennial of Design and Architecture

May 6th-August 28th, 2022 / March 3rd-August 25th, 2024

Epidemics are often described as accidental disruptions of the everyday life.

As “outbreaks” that occur precipitously, destroying the “normal” flow of a given order.

As invisible microorganisms, unexpectedly encountering healthy bodies.

As humans being attacked by external and foreign agents, in lethal ways.

As something that happens in architecture.

But epidemics are not interruptions.

They are not unexpected accidents, that should never have happened.

They are not the invasion of alien-agents on individuals.

On the contrary: Epidemics are togetherness in the making.

Epidemics are the way different forms of life negotiate their coexistence.

Epidemics are bodies, other bodies, viruses, bacteria, microbes, spaces, cultures, technologies, buildings, land-uses and infrastructures infiltrating and being infiltrated by each other.

They remind us that there is no such a thing as individuals.

They show us that we are constructed in the hybridization with others, with others different to us. That we are the result of composition and recompositing. 

They remind us what construction is.

Epidemics are entangled heterogeneity.

Sound / Dur. 18 mins. 46 secs

Ivan L. Munuera & Alicia Buades