The first Critical Physiotherapy Course session starts in 2 weeks
The first of our Critical Physiotherapy Course sessions titled The architecture of Movement will be running in just 2 weeks time.
The times for various locations around the world are listed below. Location Local Time Time Zone UTC Offset Auckland (New Zealand - Auckland) Thursday, 21 February 2019 at 8:00:00 a.m. NZDT UTC+13 hours London (United Kingdom - England) Wednesday, 20 February 2019 at 7:00:00 p.m. GMT UTC New York (USA - New York) Wednesday, 20 February 2019 at 2:00:00 p.m. EST UTC-5 hours Los Angeles (USA - California) Wednesday, 20 February 2019 at 11:00:00 a.m. PST UTC-8 hours Berlin (Germany - Berlin) Wednesday, 20 February 2019 at 8:00:00 p.m. CET UTC+1 hour Perth (Australia - Western Australia) Thursday, 21 February 2019 at 3:00:00 a.m. AWST UTC+8 hours Sydney (Australia - New South Wales) Thursday, 21 February 2019 at 6:00:00 a.m. AEDT UTC+11 hours Corresponding UTC (GMT) Wednesday, 20 February 2019 at 19:00:00 The session will last between 60-90 minutes, attendance is free, and all you need to do is follow this link a few minutes before the meeting starts: https://aut.zoom.us/j/467548917.
These are very informal sessions. You can just come along to listen, or chat with the other attendees on-line. There are no formalities, just a meeting to try and stretch our thinking into some new directions with some new ideas that might just be relevant to physiotherapy theory and practice.
And here's an outline of the session:
The Architecture of Movement
A/Prof David Nicholls School of Clinical Sciences, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand
Paul Virilio (1932-2018), one of the leading French philosophers of the last century, died in September of last year at the age of 86. During his working life, he had a wide range of interests and influences, but remains largely unknown to people working in healthcare. This is a real shame because his writings – though often strange and difficult – provide some really interesting insights into the world around us. In this talk I want to introduce you to two of Virilio’s more interesting ideas: bunker architecture and dromology.
Like many of his contemporaries, Virilio survived WWII and spent much of his academic life trying to understand the role war played in shaping people’s lives. He was particularly interested in the ‘accidents’ that resulted from our desire to be safer and more technologically advanced, and he did as much as anyone to forewarn us of the risks of modern civilisation to the climate, our political environment, and our mental and physical health.
Oddly (and yet quite brilliantly), Virilio was inspired by the bunkers that had been built along the Atlantic coast during the war. Virilio saw parallels between the design of these bunkers and a long human history of needing shelter and safety. He was interested in the way architecture allowed for movement, and shaped the way we lived. He wanted to know how the design of our urban environment prevented us descending into disorder, crime and terror. He saw modern cities as the experimental laboratories of policing and control, and thought our lived spaces looked increasingly like airports, filled with technologies designed to regulate and control our movement.
Virilio was interested in the pace of life, and defined an approach called dromology, that looked into the consequences of our ability to instantaneously connect with anyone around the world. Anticipating the Internet, Virilio pondered what it meant to us to be able to ‘move’ in any direction at the speed of light (through smooth space, as Deleuze called it), and how this would change our sense of ourselves as beings.
As a thinker, Virilio offers some very powerful ways to critique the world that we often take for granted. As physiotherapists interested in movement, Virilio offers some unique tools of analysis. In this short talk, I want to try to give you a flavour of a couple of his ideas, and encourage you to dig deeper into his writings.
Suggested reading
Cooper, S. (2002). Chapter 6: Paul Virilio. In Technoculture & Critical Theory (pp. 114–137). London, Taylor & Francis.
Lacy, M. (2014). Security, Technology and Global Politics: Thinking with Virilio. London, Routledge.
Virilio, P., & Redhead, S. (2005). The Paul Virilio reader. New York, Columbia University Press.
You tube:
A tribute to Paul Virilio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4HyNK45pIY
Paul Virilio A Discussion by John David Ebert 1/2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKPHLH88vf4
Questions:
What is the effect of our therapeutic and clinical architectures on ourselves and our clients?
Can physiotherapy claim to be an advocate for movement, if it’s physical spaces are designed to discipline and control movement? What about free movement?
Is an accelerating pace of life (hyperspace) a good thing? If not, why not?