At the Cutting Edge Between Semiology and Phenomenology : Performances of Orlan and Franko B*
Part of : Γράμμα : περιοδικό θεωρίας και κριτικής ; Vol.20, 2012, pages 260-272
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260-272
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The body – whether it is seen as being a material, substantive entity or dematerialised,semiotic sign, or even a technological abstraction – is alwayscaught up in a discourse at the intersection of art, technology and body politics,where social and political structures are often (re)enacted and (re)producedthrough individual acts and practices. The machinic body, genderedbody, historicised body, performing body, fragmented body, objectifiedbody, phenomenological body and the body in pain all point to the ineluctable,historical discursivity surrounding the body, from a Western metaphysicsof presence to a de-subjectified semiotics to a postmodernist revisionof notions of embodiment, where the body (as well as identity) is relegatedto fictive, dialogical or constantly emerging and shifting positions.This paper aims to show how the artistic practices of the bodily-based performanceartists Orlan and Franko B, who theatrically cut and refashiontheir bodies in front of a large audience through the use of machinic andtechnological devices, attempt (and yet fail) to stretch the body’s boundariesand to collapse the material body into the abstract body-machineimagecomplex by merging life and machinic processes. It also points tothe very real limits of using semiology as a hermeneutical system.
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References (1):
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