In recent years, neuroscientists have made ambitious attempts to explain artistic processes and spectatorship through brain imaging techniques. But can brain science really unravel the workings of art? Is the brain in fact the site of aesthetic appreciation? Embodying Art recasts the relationship between neuroscience and aesthetics and calls for shifting the focus of inquiry from the brain itself to personal experience in the world. Chiara Cappelletto presents close readings of neuroscientific and philosophical scholarship as well as artworks and art criticism, identifying their epistemological premises and theoretical consequences. She critiques neuroaesthetic reductionism and its assumptions about a mind/body divide, arguing that the brain is embodied and embedded in affective, cultural, and historical milieus. Cappelletto considers understandings of the human brain encompassing scientific, philosophical, and visual and performance arts discourses. She examines how neuroaesthetics has constructed its field of study, exploring the ways digital renderings and scientific data have been used to produce the brain as a cultural and visual object. Tracing the intertwined histories of brain science and aesthetic theory, Embodying Art offers a strikingly original and profound philosophical account of the human brain as a living artifact.

Allison Moore examines the tensions between the local and the global in the art photography movement that blossomed in Bamako, Mali, in the 1990s, showing contemporary Malian photography to be a rich example of Western notions of art meeting traditional cultural precepts to forge new artistic forms, practices, and communities.

"Tracing a dynamic genealogy of performance from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, McMillian contends that black women artists practiced a purposeful self-objectification, transforming themselves into art objects. In doing so, these artists raised new ways to ponder the intersections of art, performance, and black female embodiment."--Back cover.

The Art of Somatic Coaching introduces the concepts and principles of coaching with practices that include body awareness, bodywork, and mindfulness for both the coach and the client. Author and expert coach, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, PhD, explains that in order to achieve truly sustainable changes in individuals, teams, and organizations, it is necessary to implement body-oriented somatic practices in order to dissolve habits, behaviors, and interpretations of the world that are no longer relevant. He explains that these ways of being are integrated in the body--at the level of the musculature, organs, and nervous system. By implementing a somatic approach, these patterns can be shifted in order for transformation to occur. Opening with a discussion of the roots of Somatic Coaching, the book describes the emotional and physical cost of being distanced from our bodies. Originating from the rationalistic idea that the mind and body are separate, this sense of disconnection spurred the emergence of the field of somatics that views the body as not just a physiological entity, but as the center of our lived experience in the world. Out of this philosophy, Somatic Coaching was developed as a way to cultivate the self through the body. Methods in this book include: • Somatic awareness--becoming aware of sensations • Somatic opening--includes bodywork to release held patterns in the body • Somatic practices--meditation, movement, and being present in everyday life The social context in which one is raised, the supportive, healing force of the outdoors and nature as well as acknowledgment of the spirit are also woven into the practice. Through these practices, a rhythm of unfolding occurs in what Strozzi-Heckler describes as an Arc of Transformation--moving in stages from conditioned tendencies to a new satisfying and fulfilling way of being that is fully embodied. Contents: Introduction; Chapter One: A Short Distance but a Big Cost; Chapter Two: Coaching; Chapter Three: Somatics and Somatic Coaching; Chapter Four: The Methodology; Chapter Five: The Rhythm of Action; Chapter Six: The Somatic Arc of Transformation

In Embodying Relation Allison Moore examines the tensions between the local and the global in the art photography movement in Bamako, Mali, which blossomed in the 1990s after Malian photographers Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé became internationally famous and the Bamako Photography Biennale was founded. Moore traces the trajectory of Malian photography from the 1880s—when photography first arrived as an apparatus of French colonialism—to the first African studio practitioners of the 1930s and the establishment in 1994 of the Bamako Biennale, Africa's most important continent-wide photographic exhibition. In her detailed discussion of Bamakois artistic aesthetics and institutions, Moore examines the post-fame careers of Keïta and Sidibé, the biennale's structure, the rise of women photographers, cultural preservation through photography, and how Mali's shift to democracy in the early 1990s enabled Bamako's art scene to flourish. Moore shows how Malian photographers' focus on cultural exchange, affective connections with different publics, and merging of traditional cultural precepts with modern notions of art embody Caribbean philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant's notion of “relation” in ways that spark new artistic forms, practices, and communities.