This week we looked at the notion of Posthuman and its performance attributes.  This is the coming together of man and machine, a synthesis of what we recognise as reality and as virtual reality.  It is “the emergent relationship between the human and the machine as creating a hybrid subjectivity that is continuously moving between the material realm of bodily agency and the informational realm of digitality” (Klich, 2011, p. 189).  The Posthuman perspective relies heavily on technology, however it should be seen as a denial of humanity, more as an evolution of humanity.  Technology is not a new phenomenon that has come about with the discovery of the internet and nanotechnology, so in no means should the Posthuman view be considered solely a current issue.  When the wheel was discovered man utilised that technology to its potential.  Our relationship to technology evolves.

We have reached a point now perhaps where Posthuman is becoming more obvious with the first steps towards biotic advances: men becoming cyborgs, part human, part machine.

What can be seen here is a synthetic arm being controlled by a human mind.  It is an enhancement of technology just like the wheel was.  A weakness in our bio-chemical composition was identified and through research a solution has been found.  You may ask what this has to do with art?

Performance artist Stelarc, whose works often examine the use of robotics, attached hooks to his flesh and suspended himself in the air in a series of performances since the 1970s.  His performances ranged from suspension inside a studio to being hung between two skyscrapers.  Here Stelarc displays the body as both object and subject, observing the materiality of the body.  It was to explore the limits of the flesh using machines to attach the hooks directly onto it.

Similarly, Stelarc later developed an ear in a laboratory, which he then had surgically attached to his forearm.  This ear was to be fitted with microphone and Bluetooth technology so that, through digital means, it was able to function as a third ear.  The argument here to those who state it as “offensive and distressing” (BBC, 2007) is that it serves as an extension of living.  In theory it is no different from having access to information around the world from the Smartphone in your pocket or a GPS system in your car connecting you to a satellite in space.

Therefore if all art, time being irrelevant, is to be taken as a reflection of its context, and as we have established technology is not a modern issue, then performances that exercise the ever dynamic relationship between research and the human should not be scrutinised, regardless of how radical they may initially seem.  “The Posthuman exits simultaneously as both body (material entity) and digital information” (Klich, 2011, p. 192), our dependence on social media, our alternate aliases we live out in virtual realities make us all Posthuman beings.

Works Cited:

BBC Health (2007) Performer Gets Third Ear for Art [online] Available at  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7039821.stm > Accessed [08/10/2014]

Klich, Rosemary (2011) Multimedia Performance, London: Macmillan.  pp. 178-203