#prosthethics

October 6th 2016 17-19h Location:  Stroom Den Haag Guest Readers:  Maciej Ozog, Marco Donnarumma

Texts: Rosi Braidotti, Joanna Zylinska, Vivian Sobchack, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Becoming Monstrous –

A Species for Which We Do Not Yet Have a Name

The concept of the technological body, a term originally coined by Donna Haraway, refers to an amalgam of biology and technology which co-constitute an individual subject. This notion has by and large invaded and submitted to the mainstream cultural imagination. Through the celebration of body-machines, cell-machines, and bio-systems of the future the technological body, a very real thing, has become an object of spectacle and of horror. Simultaneously, as forces of thought within queer-, gender- and bio-politics engage in a highly critical investigation of these systems, artistic practice potentially offers another way of thinking, navigating both aesthetic and critical dimensions to draw out the fault lines between body, prosthetics and power; becoming cyborg and becoming monstrous. But how to proceed?

For this cluster of reading rooms we are happy to be joined by two guest readers whose research lies at the cutting edge of these themes, and will guide us in thinking through tools for artists to consider prostheses, technological extensions and biosystems beyond the self-perpetuating tropes of the sensational, spectacular and dystopian.

Please reserve a spot by sending an email to [email protected]. We will also provide you with a copy of the texts.

Invited Guests:

Dr. Maciej Ożóg is a sound artist and media theorist who has authored numerous articles concerning aesthetics of new media art, critical art, avant-garde film, video, and experimental music. His research focuses on surveillance studies, information and network society, tactical media, bio art and posthumanism. He is a lecturer at the Department of Electronic Media, University of Lodz, Poland, and in 2007 received a postdoctoral grant from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for the project “Surveillance as Theme and Method of New Media Art”. In 2012 he received a grant from the National Science Centre for the research project “New Media Art as Critical Praxis”. Ozog is a member of Art & Science Meeting Project in the Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk, and is a member of the Inter-Society for Electronic Art, and Polish Society of Cultural Studies.

Marco Donnarumma is a unique presence in contemporary performance, distinguishing himself by his use of emerging technology to deliver body performances that are at once intimate and powerful, oneiric and uncompromising, sensual and confrontational. Working with biotechnology, biophysical sensing, and more recently artificial intelligence and neurorobotics, Donnarumma expresses the chimerical nature of the body with a new and unsettling intensity. He is renown for his skill in using sound, whose physicality and depth he exploits to create experiences of instability, awe, shock and entrainment.

Latest doodle with some quick colours and missing refs (my biggest problem when I'm drawing something while I'm in the train). This is mostly a comparison of two different types of cyborgs. Headworld stuff go go go!

On the right we have Bryer. While being called human he is technically a cyborg. In the Phrexian universe a cyborg is not defined by how much mechanic parts the body has. It is defined if the brain is connected with a computer system or not. He and the people around him are not aware of the fact that he has such a system so he is still called "human" or "mechanically altered human" for his metal prosthetics (right arm, parts of his shoulder and back, right side of the hip and right leg).

Rais on the other hand is the perfect example of a cyborg. In his case he is even close to be considered an android. While cyborgs maintain at least a small degree of their biological self an android is completely driven by a computer system with no useful biological parts. Rais was born human and step by step changed into what he is now. Nearly 85-90% of his body is made of metal and other non organic material.