Exiled From Our Bodies by Tereza Stehlíková

Exiled From Our Bodies by Tereza Stehlíková

In an era where digital devices increasingly mediate our perception of reality, this book explores the tension between the richness of direct sensory experience and the allure of the screen. It examines how our growing dependence on virtual spaces and visually dominant media has led to a disconnect from our bodies and environment, contributing to a sense of alienation — both personal and ecological. Drawing on an autoethnographic approach, artistic research methods and ethnographic interviews with experts across numerous disciplines, this book argues for the continuing importance of lived, embodied, multi-sensory experience. It considers how the arts, rather than merely reinforcing technological mediation, can actively subvert the passivity imposed on our subjectivity by the latter — offering creative strategies to re-engage with the world through all our senses. By using artistic processes to navigate the tension between the virtual and the real, the book explores how creative practices can generate new ways of seeing, feeling and understanding. At its core, this work suggests that to even begin to address the current environmental crisis, we must first return to our bodies and come back to our senses — literally and figuratively. Through artistic experimentation, philosophical inquiry and sensory exploration, it proposes a reawakening to the reciprocity between body, technology and environment, offering a pathway towards a more conscious, engaged and aesth-ethical way of inhabiting the world.

Tereza Stehlíková is a Czech/British artist, researcher and educator working across moving image, installation and performance. Her artistic research explores sensory perception and embodiment. She leads the Visual Arts department at Vysoká škola kreativní komunikace and PhD seminars at the Academy of Performing Arts and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, in Prague. She is also the founder and editor of Tangible Territory, an online journal on art and the senses.