4Bid Gallery: Body of Evidence
Exhibition 23.06.22 - 25.06.22
As we are flesh, so we are transient and ephemeral. Or are we?
Body of Evidence takes on an uncanny presence, as Lisa explores performance and voice work through adopting text extractions and personal reflections, probing viewers to contemplate and reconsider. What is the Cyber aesthetic? One might argue that this question is more of an artistic question, yet from the perspectives of theorists this question is interwoven in theory, as it is informed by various preconceptions of what it should be, what it could be, what it could change, and how it could make a change for people identifying as women.
We have the possibility of creating a new world and a new humanity, in a way that is drastically different from our predecessors. Be it information, technology, politics or disease, its virality is unmatched today. Performance cements that the most profound moment is when you are simply present, yet it is vital in its position of critically questioning digital, humanoid and Cyborg advances.
As we are flesh, so we are transient and ephemeral. Or are we?
The lines of our synchronous existence in the physical and digital realms are becoming gradually indistinguishable, our transition from human to Cyborg has begun. By shedding our corporeal bodies, we start to shed pre-existing conceptions of identity.
Are you experiencing the uncanny feeling of being aware of the implications and consequences of your actions, and their, literally, world altering reverberations? Welcome to the Anthropocene! What the Anthropocene sees is the culpability and our fragility as humans.
The world is an uncanny place when billionaires are racing to space with their speculations of Armageddon in sight. Can we avoid hysteria? Can we listen to nature’s language, and better our home through the synergy of humanity and nature?
Does Cyberia offer an opportunity of transformation and performance of infinite identities through becoming digital? Will the future bring a different aspect to being trans? Transhuman - the wish to get rid of the physical body, to exclusively exist in a digital realm? Which costs would such an existence entail? What would the loss of senses such as touch, taste and smell mean for the experience of being human? Could we still consider ourselves human without a tangible body? Or what would it mean to gain new senses through artificial sense design?
I believe that our constructed environments should focus on decay rather than disposal, but what does that mean for humanity? We are constantly looking for the elixir of life, pushing boundaries of our physical bodies and health through altering and manufacturing new bodies and digital prosthetics, finding new ways to cure diseases, methods of enhancing our capabilities, and pre-determining the dispositions of posterity. It may bring about a positive new reality, and it lies close ahead. Therefore, I see it as our current duty to pin down and interrogate the ethical implications of our developments now.
Looking ahead, I see compost.
How can we find equanimity when the scores of our daily routines are decomposing? Do we orchestrate temporal compositions? Or do we wait till all is compost before we use its fertility as additive for new structures? Can our current embargo force a doctrine of change? And if every abyss is a mountain, how can we turn the aiguilles to the sky, initiating new harmonies and oscillation? Will we realize that our existence is linked? And whilst searching for nectar, do we understand our belonging to the expansive ecosystem that is Earth?
Project sources: Neri Oxman, Erin Striff, Donna Haraway, Legacy Russel, Philip Auslander, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, Shalini Kantayya, Joy Buolamwini, Cathy O’Neil, Meredith Broussard, Arundhati Roy, Neil Harbisson, Lynn Hershman Leeson, UNESCO
Thank you Arts Council Norway, Cultiva Superekspress and Cultiva Ekspress, together with OT301, World of Co and Joya: arte + ecologia, for supporting the different stages and developments of the project
