Joan Morey

MALLORCA, SPAIN. 1972

LA INFLUYENTE is a research and artistic creation project on the mechanisms of turning the body into symbolic capital, a speculative element and a product of veneration. Taking the relics of Saint Teresa of Ávila as the point of departure, the purpose of the project is to analyse the influence that a body can have by means of pre-modern and technological mediation devices, as well as its ability to form communities of faith or communities of users.

The notion of community—of either faith or users—can activate power-dispersion mechanisms that lead to a ‘community in motion’ with a greater impact and value. This hypothesis becomes vitally important in the context of LA INFLUYENTE because a community form with no corporeality can represent persistent nuclei of resistance, novel openings or new social imaginaries. But is a community of faith comprised the same as a community of users? How does the community feeling persist when faced with the symbolic body? How does the body continue to activate mechanisms of veneration? What is the purpose of Catholic reliquaries today? Aren’t the screens of our smartphones the reliquaries of the twenty-first century? Does an object-body have the same impact as an imagebody?

These and other questions permeate the project, building speculative bridges between devices and communities to explore intertextuality, the experience of the contemporary subject in pilgrimage and the analysis of communities moved by faith or trapped in hyperconnectivity. LA INFLUYENTE ultimately leads to an expanded performance for screens (as spectral devices) and bodies (as image) in an allegorical re-signification of the fragmentation and dispersion of the body of Saint Teresa and the reliquaries that conceal the corruption of the flesh to bring communities of faith that are not necessarily religious into dialogue.