Beyond the Narrative of the Five Senses
Workshop and research project designed and led by Daniela Marcozzi, inspired by oceanic forces and the sensorial experiences of human beings and other animals.
What happens when we start perceiving beyond the five traditional senses?
Beyond the Narrative of the Five Senses is an artistic research and training module that invites participants to explore human perception as something fluid, poetic, and ecological — a living network that connects body, environment, and imagination.
The five senses are often described as windows through which information enters from the outside world and is processed by the body. While this model is not incorrect, it may be limiting.
We don't just receive the world—we exist within it, through it.
We are not separate from our environment but are part of an energetic web we rarely perceive in its richness. What if these sensations could be embodied, named, and given performative shape?
In this work, perception is not limited to a system of reception — it is a process of co-existence.
We don’t simply receive the world; we exist within it. The human body is not separate from its surroundings but part of a continuous, vibrating field of energy and information.
Artistic and Research Context
The module originates from Daniela Marcozzi’s ongoing artistic research connecting life sciences and performance practice.
Rooted in her background as a biologist and performer, this project extends the embodied investigation of Marcozzi's workshop and research The Urge of Being toward a broader inquiry on perception, ecology, and the politics of the senses.
Drawing inspiration from other species — whales, jellyfish, birds, and humans alike — participants explore what other senses might exist beyond our habitual modes of perception.
The Political and Ecological Dimension
Our Western worldview tends to fragment experience: body vs. mind, self vs. others, science vs. art, human vs. nature.
In Beyond the narrative of the Five Senses, we’ll explore the spaces in between these dualities—where mystery, co-existence, and new sensitivities emerge.
Our senses guide our choices, actions, and ways of inhabiting the world. A body aware of its perception is also aware of how it can be shaped — or manipulated — by its environment.
To question the dominant sensory narrative is, therefore, a political and ecological urge. By refining and REDEFINING our senses, we study our relationship with the world. By awakening to how we perceive, we resist the disconnection that modern life imposes on the body.
In an age of ecological and social crisis, Beyond the Narrative of the Five Senses calls for new narratives of perception — stories that begin in the body and expand into the more-than-human. It proposes that sensitivity itself is a form of resistance, and that perception, in its poetic dimension, can become an instrument of transformation.