Fernanda Eberstadt is a journalist and author most recently of Bite Your Friends: Stories of the Body Militant, published by Europa Editions.
In her interview for Scaffold, Eberstadt discusses the power of the body as a site of political protest through adressing the lives of a disperate group of protagonists including ancient Greek Cynic philosopher Diogenes, the early Christian martyr Perpetua, and such twentieth-century prophets of bodily freedom as filmmaker-poet Pier Paolo Pasolini and the philosopher Michel Foucault.
Eberstadt's book explores the no-man’s-land between belonging and isolation, with many of the stories she tells unfolding in spaces that are somehow "other." Foucault himself might have defined them as "heterotopias" – spaces that are "disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming [...] worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside" – spaces full of potential that appeal as much to the writer as to the architect.
Scaffold is a podcast series featuring interviews with architects, artists and designers. Hosted by Matthew Blunderfield and produced by the Architecture Foundation, it is available on Apple Pocasts, Spotify, and most major podcast streaming platforms.
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Twitter: @scaffold_pod