Carnal Knowledge and Alienation: Lygia Clark’s “Stone and Air”

In Carnal Knowledge and Alienation: Lygia Clark’s“Stone and Air,” the author delves into her own warexperiences, offering an introspective, phenomenologicalview of the former U.S. Canal Zone, itsestranged and oppressive past, and its conflictingexistential tensions. As a non-concretist “proposition,”Clark’s “Stone and Air” helps to reconstruct anexistential nature of contemporary U.S. monopolizinginterests in the Americas, as well as their severeimpact on the Isthmus of Panama. In Clark’s work, apebble floats on top of an inflated plastic bag whichClark holds on her hands. Following her “proposition,”both alienation and vertigo can be understoodas authoritarian components from the spatiotemporalconstruct known as “Zona Del Canal.” Thus,“Stone and Air” brings forth a more in-depth understandingof the functioning of the former U.S. CanalZone and its role in the world.

Volume Editors
Urs Peter Flueckiger & Victoria McReynolds

ISBN
978-1-944214-16-6