cyborg performance :: essays research papers

Explore the relationship amongst the consistency and technology in the work of Orlan and StelarcA mover is essentially composed of two entities the self and the representation of the self. The human body is the physiological 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 moveions with the military operation 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, take exception this perception - Mcclellan (1994, para.14) describes them as the post-human Ad am and Eve, suggesting that they ar heralding in a new breed of performer, inextricably related to, and even created by, technology. This certainly reflects the berth of the body and technology in current Western society - checkup technology can create life in vitro and, defying nature, can transfer its intrinsic genetic makeup, and internet technologies can allow a soul 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 appearance in which it is represented (the body) is altered.In combining aspects of endurance and durational performance art, Orlan presented the revise of her own body in the surgical theatre. The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan is her close well-known piece of work, begun in 1990. However, she did begin performing in the mid-sixties when, even then, she demonstrated a subv ersive attitude towards the body. In 1964 she employ her own body as a unit of pulsationment (Orlan-corps) to measure public buildings (Flande ed., Biography, www.orlan.net). This project continued into the late 1970s. The reducing 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 viewer as that of a white woman whose face is perfectly trigonal in line and profile (Balsamo cited in Auslander, 1997, p.