H o l l o w
B o d y
(From an unpublished conversation with Stelarc)
by Basilisk
S T E L A R C: In considering the body as an architecture of
operation and awareness in the world, one begins to question how
altering the structure might adjust its awareness. Not to undermine
evolution but rather to proliferate alternate possibilities. And
perhaps one has to say that the body is no longer about organization at all. There are two strategies one might take. Modularizing
the body to facilitate replacement of malfunctioning components.
And hollowing out the body to make it a better host for its
technologies. Not only machinic technologies of life-support but
also interfaces for alien agency. The Hollow Body is a node, a
nexus for an organ-ization that extends and inflates in the
electronic space of the internet....
The Hollow Body recedes from the human horizon. It exposes
itself and finds itself wanting. Obsolescence is it's realization and it
is the condition that enables its emptiness. Not an emptiness of
despair but an emptiness from which expectation arises. Not an
emptiness of inflation but an intense emptiness that inverts as it
energizes. The Hollow Body is a body with it's organs orbiting it.
Outering it's organs facilitates their connections. Re-wiring the
body, re-mapping its functions cannot occur in the compact and
complex wet and soft environments of the skin. The future of the
body is outside itself. It is not so much an issue of the fragmented
or fracture form, but rather of an extruded awareness into
electronic space and modulated time....
Obsolescence, invasion, the involuntary and alien agency are
the experiences of the Hollow Body. Thus it's effect is not one of
closure but rather of collapse. A hole is an enclosed space. A
defined emptiness. In it's electronic immersion notions of smooth
space and accumulated time are undermined. Collapses between
things occur through connections and communication. With
multiplying feedback loops, we generate increasing collapses
between bodies and within bodies. Skin, the site of social exchange
and body boundary is a meaningless interface when information
penetrates space between bodies and within bodies....
The Hollow Body is not about constructing other surfaces but
about a strategy of strange otherness. Of collapse and inversion.
Surfaces and boundaries are not so relevant when talking about
systems that extrude and extend and multiply vectors of operation
and awareness. I guess what is necessary is to rewire and
reconfigure the body, concerned not so much with the integrity of
its form but rather the multiplicity of its functions. The Hollow Body
is a condition that questions not only it's internal structure but also
the notion of what it means to be human....
It's not only about the invasion of (w)holes. At a
nanotechnology scale these invading machines will be embedded
and will inhabit cellular spaces. These bits of technology will no
longer be inside the body, but rather will become cellular
components of the body fabric. This is made possible not only
through increasing biocompatibility of substance but of
microminiaturisation of scale. If we cannot see, if we cannot sense
these nanomachines, then in a way these technologies aren't
merely invading the body but now constitute it as functional and
internal components. Not internal in that they occupy holes, but
internal in a more fundamental sense....
As a site for multiple and remote agency, as a site for
extended operation, the body functions as the Hollow Body. Not a
mal-function but rather a multi-function. Beyond it's biological
boundaries and the local space in which it inhabits. No longer as a
biological body with organization, but as one of Fractal Flesh, of
split physiology, of hybrid form and functions, interfacing the actual
with the virtual. The virtual as an extended operation beside and
beyond the imaginary. The virtual is the domain of the imaginary
made operational....
The Hollow Body is drained of desire....