The body

In Rainbows

In Rainbows is Radiohead’s seventh studio album, self-released in 2007. It was recorded between March 2005 and June 2007 across four locations: their Oxfordshire studio, Halswell House, Tottenham House, and the Hospital Club in London. After initial unproductive sessions without Nigel Godrich and a failed collaboration with Spike Stent, the band re-enlisted Godrich in 2006. The lyrics are less political and more personal than previous albums, exploring mortality, embodiment, and transience. Production techniques include merging rhythm tracks, phasing guitars inspired by Steve Reich, and capturing white noise via full-scale string clusters. The album runs 45 minutes. Its release used a 'pay what you want' digital download model. It won the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.

MAGDALENE

Magdalene is FKA Twigs’s second studio album, released on 8 November 2019 after a four-year hiatus. It features self-production alongside Nicolas Jaar, Koreless, Daniel Lopatin, Skrillex, Benny Blanco, Michael Uzowuru, and Noah Goldstein. Its sound blends electronic art pop with 'lurid' modern dance and 'carnal' soul, defying genre classification while incorporating elements of avant-garde, R&B, trap, hip hop, trip hop, alt-pop, punk rock, industrial, opera, chamber pop, and Bulgarian folk. It samples 'Moma Hubava' by Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares in 'Holy Terrain' and 'Storm Clouds Rising' by the Florida Mass Choir in 'Fallen Alien'. Inspired by Twigs’s 2017 breakup with Robert Pattinson, it explores heartbreak, physical collapse, self-compassion, and emotional reassembly. Critical reception was universal, with the album ranking No. 1 on year-end lists from The A.V. Club, Clash, Now, and Time.

A History of Violence

David Cronenberg’s 2005 crime thriller adapts a graphic novel into a precise, unsentimental study of identity, memory, and embodied violence. Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall, a small-town diner owner whose past as hitman Joey Cusack resurfaces after he kills two robbers. The film tracks the unraveling of his family life and his return to Philadelphia, where violence proves inescapable — not as choice, but as somatic fact. Shot by Peter Suschitzky and scored by Howard Shore, it favours stillness over spectacle and implication over exposition.

Altered States

Altered States (1980), directed by Ken Russell from Paddy Chayefsky’s novel, follows a scientist whose experiments with sensory deprivation and psychoactive drugs trigger a terrifying biological regression. Anchored by William Hurt’s debut performance and Dick Smith’s groundbreaking makeup effects, it merges psychological horror with surrealist science fiction. Though marked by creative conflict between writer and director, the film endures as a formally audacious, physically immersive inquiry into consciousness, identity, and the fragility of the human form.

Eyes Without a Face

Eyes Without a Face (1960) is a French arthouse horror film directed by Georges Franju, following a plastic surgeon who kidnaps women to graft their faces onto his disfigured daughter. Shot by Eugen Schüfftan and scored by Maurice Jarre, it sustains a tone of poetic anguish rather than visceral terror. Its restrained performances, deliberate pacing, and clinical visuals have earned it retrospective acclaim as a landmark of moral and aesthetic horror.

First Man into Space

First Man into Space (1959) is a British science fiction-horror film directed by Robert Day, following a US Navy pilot who returns from extreme altitude encrusted in meteoric dust and transformed into a blood-dependent creature. Built on a tight budget and grounded in procedural realism, it prioritises physiological logic over myth or metaphor, using restrained performances, functional cinematography, and a lean narrative structure to sustain its central conceit. Though limited by its means, it delivers a coherent, atmospheric, and quietly tragic vision of spaceflight as irreversible bodily violation.

Flesh for Frankenstein

Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) is a Paul Morrissey-directed body horror film shot in Rome, starring Udo Kier as a Serbian-obsessed Baron who constructs living specimens from corpses. Its deadpan satire targets eugenics, authoritarianism and sexual repression through grotesque, tactile set-pieces and stilted dialogue. Though credited to Warhol and Margheriti, Morrissey shaped its vision, aided by Luigi Kuveiller’s flat, theatrical cinematography and Claudio Gizzi’s jagged score. It is neither pure parody nor sincere horror, but a conceptual object that demands attention to texture, logic and failure.

Gray's Anatomy

Spalding Gray’s 1996 monologue film, directed by Steven Soderbergh, documents his diagnosis with macular pucker and his turn toward alternative treatments. Filmed in ten days with minimal staging, it relies entirely on Gray’s voice, syntax, and timing. Elliot Davis’s restrained cinematography and Cliff Martinez’s sparse score support rather than interpret. The film balances wit and vulnerability without resolving into either satire or sermon — though its final passages strain under the weight of their own metaphysical drift.

Hunger

Steve McQueen’s 2008 debut dramatises the 1981 IRA hunger strike in Maze Prison, focusing on Bobby Sands’s final weeks. Shot in stark, immersive style by Sean Bobbitt and edited by Joe Walker, it privileges physical detail over exposition, using long takes, minimal dialogue, and unflinching attention to the body’s decay and resilience. Michael Fassbender lost significant weight for the role. The film premiered at Cannes, winning the Caméra d’Or, and received widespread critical acclaim for its formal rigour and moral gravity.

Pina

Wim Wenders’ 2011 3D documentary Pina records performances by Tanztheater Wuppertal of four major works by Pina Bausch — Le sacre du printemps, Café Müller, Kontakthof (across three age groups), and Vollmond — filmed shortly after her death in 2009. Intercut are outdoor solos and duets around Wuppertal, accompanied by dancers’ voice-over reflections. Shot by Hélène Louvart and edited by Toni Froschhammer, the film treats choreography as living structure, not historical artefact.

Jürgen Mayer

April Greiman

Rei Kawakubo

Just Dance (video game)

Just Dance (2009) is a Wii-exclusive rhythm game published by Ubisoft. Players use only the Wii Remote in their right hand to mirror on-screen dancers’ choreography. Moves are scored X, OK, or Great. Shake moves trigger a shake meter for bonus points. Each song has two scoring targets: 10,000 (Standard) and 15,000 (Master). Four modes include Standard, Warm Up, Strike a Pose, and Last One Standing. It is one of Ubisoft’s core, long-running franchises.

Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

Mortal Kombat (2011) is a 2.5D fighting game developed by NetherRealm Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in April 2011. It is the ninth installment in the Mortal Kombat series. The game runs at 60 fps on a strict two-dimensional plane, with 3D-rendered characters. Four controller buttons map to specific limbs. A three-tiered super meter charges through performing special moves, being blocked, or being hit — enabling enhanced specials (level one), combo interrupts (level two), and X-ray moves (level three), which show internal bone and organ damage. Extra modes include a multi-character story mode, Fatality training, Challenge Tower, tag team fighting, and online play.

Ring Fit Adventure

Ring Fit Adventure is an exercising role-playing video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It requires two physical components—the Ring-Con and the Leg Strap—to translate real-world movement and strain into in-game actions. Its main mode is a turn-based RPG where overworld navigation (running in place, jumping via Ring-Con squeeze-and-release) and combat (exercise-based attacks, abdominal press defence) are fully dependent on those accessories. Exercises are colour-coded by target muscle group: red for arms, blue for legs, yellow for core, green for yoga. The design prioritises embodied routine over mechanical depth or narrative ambition.

Wii Fit

Wii Fit is a simulation of physical discipline built around a single hardware input: the Wii Balance Board. It measures weight and centre of balance in real time. It offers over 40 activities — yoga, strength training, aerobics, balance games — all calibrated to that input. It supports up to eight user profiles, each tied to date of birth, height, and a Mii. It logs external activity manually. It uses an on-screen trainer in yoga and strength modes. It does not simulate athletic development. It simulates accountability.

Endoscope

Bozzini’s Lichtleiter established endoscopy as a category: a purpose-built optical conduit for internal light and view. It worked technically in most cavities. It failed institutionally — blocked by authority, not physics. Its legacy is conceptual, not clinical.

Ballet and fashion

Identity performance

Quantified self

Performance art

Yves Saint Laurent (designer)

Corset