cyborg performance :: essays research papers

Explore the relationship between the body and technology in the work of Orlan and StelarcA performer is essentially self-possessed 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 ofttimes 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 resume 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, scientific 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, su ggesting that they are heralding in a new breed of performer, inextricably related to, and yet created by, technology. This certainly reflects the role of the body and technology in current Western society - medical technology puke 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 deification Orlan is her most well-known firearm of work, begun in 1990. However, she did begin performing in the 1960s when, even then, she demonstrated a subversive attitude towar ds 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 little 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 suddenly symmetrical in line and profile (Balsamo cited in Auslander, 1997, p.