Kamran Behrouz

Cosmopolitics of the Body

Beginn des PhD-Programms / Start of the PhD-Program:
SS 2017 Betreuung / Supervision:
Yvonne Volkart
Nina Sellars In this PhD project, I am exploring and examining cosmopolitics of the body through the lens of performance art. In this research, performance works as a tool and the body as medium. By adopting the notion of “cosmopolitics” as a method, this research attempts to speculate inter-relativity of different psycho-cultural/political narratives of the body to map out the cultural location of queer bodies within the heterosocial matrix of species hierarchy. A series of eight interconnected motion captures (virtual) and site-specific performances shape the skeleton of this project and through diffractive analysis of these performances, this research attempts to speculate and expand the image of body and to ask; what does it mean to possess a body in posthuman era? Based on numerous interviews and a close analysis of 6 case studies, this research uses untranslatability as a methodology to spot the emergence of linguistic lacks — regarding sex and gender in contemporary Persian Language(s) — and the effect of such shortcomings on the performativity of queer/ trans/intersex bodies as well as their echoes in the language of biopolitics and law in Iran. How does the performativity of above-mentioned bodies change and become the subject of displacement and how this process influenced, and forged in the performativity of these displaced bodies within a new necropolitical arena: in diaspora, exile, or refugee camps? In this research three notions: Body, performance and cosmopolitics as different poles of the exchange, introduce an experimental model of becoming. Anthology Kurz-Biographie / Short Bio:
Kamran Behrouz (1984) is a Visual Artist, born and raised in Tehran, currently working and living in Zurich. Their PhD, entitled ‘Cosmopolitics of the Body’, uses posthuman critical theory as a navigational tool to examine the boundaries of bodies and humanity’s embedded and embodied cultures. Email-Adresse / Email-Address:
info@kamranbehrouz.com Website:
www.kamranbehrouz.com