Transitive Corporealities and Mixed Realities / Laura Rouzet (2019)

Examining our new postgenomic chimeras in disarticulating the cyborgian theoretical personae, I want to question what is a body today. What does it mean to be posthuman? Is it about Sci-fi dystopia, human machines, and enhanced bodies? These would be preconceptions; as for Braidotti, Haraway’s figuration “invites us to think what kind of bodies and gender systems are being constructed” (2016). The posthuman is not about the past or the future but about today and the condition of our time. It is about the encounter of our bodies and environments, about progress and concerns, about acknowledging others and our otherness. The “post” is not to be considered of as after, but rather a shift towards a process of becoming, a non-linear becoming without following normative models of subjectivities.

As Haraway is suggesting “tentacular thinking” for the “Chthulucene” (2016), in thinking with our bodies to create paths and make connections. The subject of this thesis consists in untangling the tentacular to weave a practice in a fine art context. This research is an examination of a performative installation titled “Under a Digital Lake” that I created, as well as a wider body of works. It consists in analysing processes that articulates a transdisciplinary practice, which spans various mediums from sculpture to video to popping or voguing. Pondering on the process of becoming, the critical posthuman framework has been central in building a practice, in providing a frame of thought as well as a process of making.

How to express unbounded corporealities? As artists, how can we use tangible materials and bodies to reach our transversal subjectivities? The research unravels processes of assemblage and cartography to create landscapes with landmarks and fixed references where bodies can navigate to become other.