Beyond the Cyborg: Performance, attunement and autonomous computation

International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 13(2). London: Routledge, 2017

Body technologies, such as prostheses and biosensors, are active means of lived experimentation: they enable forms of hybrid embodiment such as the cyborg, whose diverse representations by artists and performers have infiltrated our societal normative regime. To talk about body politics is therefore to talk about the technologies the body incorporates, how they probe its alleged integrity. Performance theories and practices offer a fertile ground of experimentation with this issue. Yet, there is a tendency to frame body technologies as either material extensions of one’s body or external objects one perceives with. Such approaches support technocratic systems of beliefs by eliding immaterial and pre-conscious aspects of technological incorporation, I argue.

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