"Body knows – Body does, Corporal knowledge and heritage interpretation"

Abstract

The proposed paper looks at the body as a crucial agent in building and transferring knowledge. By understanding the memory, remembrance, and therefore traditionally defined cultural heritage as permanently active categories, i.e., as always dependent on the action of the body and between the bodies, the question of what, how and why is produced as information and knowledge is set as an always contemporary and presentable phenomenon. Bodies in action learn, act and teach simultaneously – bodies know and bodies do the interpretation of heritage categories and actively inscribe and pass on the knowledge. Through analysis of several examples of student work produced within the framework of three summer schools conceptualized by the University of Hildesheim (Germany) on the issues of performing heritage, the approach to research and learning in terms of presentational forms is advocated for as a form corporal interpretation and knowledge making. The limits of doing, sensing and finally knowing through the body and corporal interaction are tested as a means of establishing a new method for educating and using memory, acts of remembrance, and performing heritage.