Imagining the Posthuman: Art, Technology, and Living in the Future

Abstract

This project examines works of contemporary performance, digital, and bio- art that reflect the blurring of boundaries once perceived as impermeable, whether between art and science, organism and machine, or the natural and modified. They reflect what has been called posthumanism, which, broadly defined, sees past the isolated, self-contained individual subject celebrated by liberal humanism to understand humans as bound to and shaped by their organic and technological others. As increasing scientific knowledge and rapidly expanding digital and communications technologies render increasingly obsolete the boundaries between humans and animals, organisms and machines, scholars including Cary Wolfe, Katherine Hayles, and Donna Haraway have wrestled with what this posthuman present means, yet have largely failed to address a critical aspect of understanding and imagining the posthuman: the visual. In a posthuman environment in which distinctions are created or obscured by means of what can or cannot be seen, and in which lives are increasingly mediated by ubiquitous screens and images, understanding the role the visual plays is crucial. Examining works by artists Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, Orlan, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, Char Davies, and Stelarc, this project focuses on how technologies of sight reveal and structure the posthuman experience; how artistic practice shapes and is shaped by a posthuman world; how the body is viewed as modifiable or even replaceable; and what posthuman ways of seeing and creating imagery mean for human interaction, understanding, and agency. Recognizing posthumanism as a way of seeing and being seen allows not only a more complex understanding thereof, but has real-world implications for the freedom, movement, and agency of those human subjects interacting in a posthuman world.