Cyborg performance Essay Example For Students

Cyborg performance Essay Explore the relationship between the body and technology in the work of Orlan and StelarcA performer is essentially composed of two entities: the self and the representation of the self. The human body is the physical manifestation of this represented self and is interpreted by the observer depending on its gender, age, colour, attractiveness, adornment and perceived disabilities (these perceptions often being culture-bound as well). In addition to this, the performer uses make-up and costume, and interactions with the performance space to affect the interpretation. For the focus of a performance space, what better place to start with than this powerful physical signifier?In performance, there is a tendency to perceive the actor and the body as a very separate entity to the concrete, technological elements of the stage. Orlan and Stelarc, contemporary performance artists, challenge this perception Mcclellan (1994, para.14) describes them as the post-human Adam and Eve, suggesting th at they are heralding in a new breed of performer, inextricably related to, and even created by, technology. This certainly reflects the role of the body and technology in current Western society medical technology can create life in vitro and, defying nature, can alter its intrinsic genetic makeup, and internet technologies can allow a person to project a fabricated disembodied persona onto the net to interact with others over vast distances. Orlan and Stelarc embrace technological integration as a prerequisite to their work the questions lie in what it means to the self if the way in which it is represented (the body) is altered. In combining aspects of endurance and durational performance art, Orlan presented the alteration of her own body in the surgical theatre. The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan is her most well-known piece of work, begun in 1990. However, she did begin performing in the 1960s when, even then, she demonstrated a subversive attitude towards the body. In 1964 she used her own body as a unit of measurement (Orlan-corps) to measure public buildings (Flande ed., Biography, www.orlan.net). This project continued into the late 1970s. The reduction of her body to a tool of measurement was the less extreme forerunner to the reduction of it as a canvas in The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan. In both pieces, she objectifies her body, however in The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, the implications on herself and her audiences are far more controversial. A surgical textbook defines ideal beauty as that of a white woman whose face is perfectly symmetrical in line and profile (Balsamo cited in Auslander, 1997, p.129). Ethnocentric definitions such as this one inevitably affect the way in which beauty is idealised in fine art. These idealisations were the inspiration for The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan. The project was a series of officially nine surgical operations, undertaken with the intention of altering parts of Orlans body to imitate those of iconic images of female beauty including Renaissance works such as Da Vincis Mona Lisa and Botticellis The Birth of Venus. In the self-consciously ironic attempt to recreate perfect beauty, Orlan turns a Western canon of images against itself and effectively undermines it. Orlan herself describes her work as Carnal Art that which is self-portraiture in the classical sense but made by means of todays technology (www.orlan.net). Orlan suggests that, by undergoing surgery, she is creating a work of art which is classical in that it presents an idealised aesthetic; however, she uses herself as the raw material. Cosmetic surgeons operate on her body and face whilst Orlan is under a local anaesthetic. Her mundane actions of reclining and reading a book (see appendix 1: Fourth Surgery-Performance) are performative in that they are deliberated to create juxtaposition with her mutilated body. The audience would expect surgery to normally be performed under general anaesthetic and therefore, for a conscious person to express feelings of pain and discomfort Orlan, however, remains calm throughout. If she were to remain unconscious and passive, it would be more comfortable for the audience to observe the operation; Orlans conscious involvement creates a disparit y between how the audience expect the human body to react to surgery and her seeming indifference. Her status is raised as she is as active as the other performers the surgeons. Orlans performative self is therefore disengaged with her body, which functions as an artistic medium, rather than as a mode of direct expression. Her body being subjected to medical technology does not seem to affect Orlan herself. The desired outcome of the surgery is specified by Orlan in the form of a wall hanging in the background of the stage; (see appendix 1) the hanging is of the face of Botticellis Venus. From a contemporary point of view, this puts the observer in mind of before and after pictures paraded on television programmes such as Extreme Makeover, first broadcast in September 2003 (News You Can Use, www.abc.com). Orlans work was strangely prophetic in that she exposed how easy and mechanical it could be to prescribe a desired form for the body and to fulfil it. The popularity and growth of the cosmetic surgery industry has now permeated Western society to the point where it is used as a form of entertainment something that Orlan had, in a sense, already done by theatricalising the process. The use of the images is also suggestive of media advertising. Physical environments constantly remind individuals of what they should be aspiring to, in television, cinema, bill boards and, more recently, o n the internet. The hangings in her performances reinforce the importance of the ideal image and the desire to achieve it. Child Abuse1 EssayStelarc demonstrates the bodys controllability in the face of technology in Fractal Flesh (1995). His body is connected to the internet via computer-interfaced muscle stimulators. These are activated by the audience on the web. Like Orlan, Stelarc objectifies the body by removing it from the control of the self. He hands over control to the audience through technology, hoping that the effect will be like electronic voodoo (Stelarc cited in Shurman, 1994, para.2). Considering this statement, and when comparing Suspension to nineteenth century Native American Sundance rituals, it seems that Stelarc unintentionally evokes a spiritual side to his work. The involvement of the audience in Fractal Flesh is similar to that of communal rituals and religious which were at the roots of modern performance. In some senses, the performative self has always been separated from the body through spiritual beliefs, before the advent of technology. The body in Fractal Flesh becomes a vehicle, perhaps not for the gods, but for the members of the audience who themselves are physically removed from the space primarily by the internet and also by physical distance. In this instance, Stelarc hands over control to the audience where Orlans audience experience no such luxury as they bear uncomfortable witness to her performances. This, again, demonstrates Orlans choice to make her body endure technology for arts sake, where Stelarc simply wants to show that the body can be altered in its functionality. One of Stelarcs pieces which does not necessarily work to this aim is Stomach Sculpture (1999). It is more comparable to The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan in that it explores the body as a vehicle for art and image, and involves more physical endurance on the part of the artist. Stelarc starves and distends his stomach before inserting a five by seven centimetre capsule, composed of surgical quality metals and which emits light and sound. The aim of the piece is for the body to become a host, not for a self or a soul but simply for a sculpture (Stelarc, Hollow Body/Hollow Space, www.stelarc.va.com.au). Again, Stelarc reduces the status of the body to a piece of equipment, in fact, a stage just as Orlan reduces hers to a canvas. In this bizarre site-specific art, the performance space and subject have been reversed. The video images of the stomach, like Orlans surgery, become uncomfortable to view because the audience are not used to watching endoscopies as an art form. The innermost parts of the human body are exposed and mechanised, again separating them from the subjectivity of the self. This performance itself however, was problematic precisely for the reasons that Stelarc outlines himself that the body is not as reliable as technology. The performance was cut short on three occasions due to excess saliva and for medical reasons the video imaging was not entirely successful (Stelarc, Hollow Body/Hollow Space, www.stelarc.va.com.au). Overall, Stelarc represents technology in his work as an aid to the human body, although some of his robotics work, such as Third Hand has been described as pretty phallic (Griffin, 1996, para.3). This is at least a possible reading but unfounded when considering his repeated belief that the body is obsolete (Stelarc, www.stelac.va.com.au) the same belief shared exactly by Orlan (cited in Mcclellan, 1994, para.11). Unlike Orlan exploring canonical image, he is not confronting issues which may be gender-bound, but which affect all humanity. For him, image enhancement is not even an issue but rather the signs of a desperate obsolete body at the end stage of its evolutionary development (cited in Mcclellan, 1994, para. 14). Stelarc uses technology for technologys sake he is suggesting that humans have advanced so far in their manipulation of technology that it now surpasses the natural mechanism of evolution. The next inevitable step is to combine the two. In a sense, Orlan agrees with this. Despite the fact that her work may be read as a feminist critique of cosmetic surgery, in Carnal Art she decries the agony of childbirth as anachronistic and ridiculous (Orlan, www.orlan.net). She suggests that something as seemingly natural as the pain of childbirth need not be seen as an inevitable part of being female as it can now be overcome by medical technology.