Bodyworks is a groundbreaking two day symposium on the enormous potential for intersections between sport, art, and culture in North America. Featuring a variety of exciting panel presentations by artists, professional and Olympic athletes, and cultural commentators, Bodyworks performs its own cultural Olympiad as it celebrates the return of the Olympics to Canada. Taking place just months before the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Bodyworks is sure to garner wide media coverage.
The symposium will underscore the ways in which overcoming physical and mental limitations in sport can help us dissolve perceived barriers of all kinds, including socio-cultural, political, and intellectual limitations, and how artistic practice and performance can lead to creative problem-solving and research breakthroughs in many diverse fields.
In keeping with the little known but long tradition of the Cultural Olympiad held in conjunction with the Olympic games and conceiving of Olympism as built on the integration of sport, art, and culture, Bodyworks seeks to establish alliances and exchanges between professionals in sports and the arts, research groups, policy-makers, and the general public with essential significance to health, cultural, and social research in Canada.