THE FAT ARCHIVE. Joy is Fat!

Exhibition in Arttransponder Berlin, 2009

The interdisciplinary project THE FAT ARCHIVE. Joy is Fat! questions the development and representation of body image as it relates to the artistic and social fantasy and demand for a “perfect” body; and how the desire for unlimited access to this body, especially as it relates to a quest for perfect health, transforms the human image.

THE FAT ARCHIVE. Joy is Fat! makes social norms, representational requirements and role models visually palatable through an exchange concerning aestheticization, stigmatization, humour, disdain, as well as a fascinated or reserved viewing, voyeuristic gaze onto that which is labelled abnormal. At the same time, obesity is being legitimised in a variety of media as the exotic, the erotic, the joyful, self-confident but also the repulsive and disgusting.

THE FAT ARCHIVE. Joy is Fat! is a collaboration with The Research Cluster: Preventive Self.

Preventive Self is concerned with the interactions between programmes of prevention and society. Using cardiovascular diseases as an example, four institutes, Humboldt University Berlin, Social Science Research Center Berlin, Charité University Medical School and University Hamburg, will empirically investigate the historical, societal, scientific and political aspects of these interactions over a period of three years. Interviews with experts from medicine, research and politics take an equal role to investigations of everyday practice and a socio-historical analysis of the role of prevention throughout the 20th century.

THE FAT ARCHIVE. Joy is Fat! is a common project by Sofia Bempeza, Steffen Krüger, Anja Sommer, Can Sungu and Wolfgang Knapp.