Panel Statement

Panel: Recombinant Culture

Circadian rhythms subside in the complexity of cyber-systems. Absent, Obselete and Invalidated Bodies proliferate, facilitating The Vanishing. It is not a ‘vanishing away’ but rather a ‘vanishing to’, where remaining human, being gendered or having a self are no longer meaningful concerns. Bodies need no longer be biologically affirmed but electronically erased. Internet-coupled bodies will be able to extrude agency and awareness from one body to another body in another place. Notions of species evolution and gender distinction are ‘remapped and redefined’ in alternate hybridities of human-machine and image-machine systems, Spoken tongues subside in the Hum of the Hybrid. And invading technology eliminates skin as a significant site. The Post-Human strategy is the shedding of skin…

• Stelarc is a  performance artist interested in alternate aesthetic strategies. He has exhibited, made installations and performed at the Videotheque (Paris), Charleroi Dance Biennale (Belgium), ISEA (Helsinki), Unstable Media (Rotterdam), The Body and Computer (Berlin) and ACREQ (Montreal) and this year, at the Greenmill Dance Project (Melbourne), the Brain / Computer Congress (Munich), CeBIT ’95 (Hanover), Dance ’96 (Munich) as well as Virtual Futures and the Biennale of Ideas (Sydney). He has interactively performed with his Third Hand, a Virtual arm, a Virtual Body and a Stomach sculpture. At present, he is developing a touch-screen interface for multiple muscle-simulation