Supervised by L. K. Cosmo
                      December 23, 2022


















Cover Page .....………………………………1
Table of Contents............................. 2
Abstract ……...................................... 3
Introduction ………............................ 3


Chapter 1: Curating Posthumanism: The Human Body and Technology

              1.1 Aspirations of the 59th Venice Biennale …………................... 8
             1.2 Casting the Human Body and Biopower .................................. 11
            1.3 The Cyborg Intersections of Fact and Fiction ......................... 13

Chapter 2: Curating Dystopia: Purposes of Speculation

            2.1 Speculative Methodologies ……........................ 17
            2.2 Dystopia Inscribed in the 21st Century Body .......................... 19
            2.3 Posthuman Visual Art . 23

Conclusion ..................................... 26
Appendix ………............................... 29
Bibliography …………….................... 36

Abstract

            The visual representations of the human body at the 59th Venice Biennale were strikingly fragmented, recalling mutations and apocalyptic accidents belonging to the realm of science fiction. Curated under the thematic of posthumanism, Tishan Hsu and Andra Ursuta’s sculptures questioned the biopolitical status of the human body both in western socio-political paradigms and in twenty-first century art making. The exponential development of technologies into the human body has prompted both a rise in anticipations of a cyborg future, and in cultural representations of the human body through dystopian narratives.This essay is aimed at analyzing the changing conception of the human being through the popularization of posthuman research and its effects on how we visualize and represent the human form. It will question the significance of representing dystopian human anatomies, how this colors Alemani’s conception of a “posthuman condition” and how it can inform posthuman research into a shift in the  conception of the human within the masses.

        Keywords: Posthumanism, Dystopia, Biopower, Art History, Venice Biennale

Introduction

            One of the key concepts of this year’s, the 59th Venice Art Biennale, is the “posthuman condition,” outlined by Cecilia Alemani in the exhibition’s curatorial statement. Alemani describes it as a vision through which artists imagine the displacement of both the western white “Man of Reason” and the human being, from the center of the universe. This vision lies at the intersection of critical race, gender and class theory and adresses issues of the definition of the human, both in current societal paradigms and in the visual arts.

Posthumanism is a philosophy and an academic field that was introduced as a rejection of Humanism in the second half of the twentieth century. It now spans many branches which are at times hard to clearly define. The general consensus within this field is that the definition of the human being is currently in crisis and needs to be re-constructed. Whether this be due to the impending ecological collapse, the warped relationship that humans have developed to their vital surroundings due to capitalism, or the progression of increasingly invasive technology into the human body, many academics believe the human being is undergoing a considerable transformation.

Since the 1970s, posthumanism has steadily gained traction, intensifying at the turn of the twenty-first century with the introduction of the symbol of the cyborg, the embodiment of the slow merging of human organisms with technology.

The solidification of posthumanist thought within and beyond academia is marked by its overwhelming influence in the curation of the Biennale, one of the most prestigious events in the art world, exhibiting hundreds of artists from all over the world and reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers at a time. Within the main exhibition at the Giardini and Arsenale venues, as well as in some of the national pavilions strewn around Venice, this posthuman condition was explored in parallel with the discursive potentials of science fiction. Through references to sci-fi literature and cinema, as well as their tropes and artifacts, Alemani also explored the speculative potentials of narrative in the imagination of a posthuman world.

The most explicit intersection of these themes is to be found in the representations of the human body itself. Several artists created mutations, transformations, dismemberments and disfigurations of the human body, particularly through sculpture. Taking after Donna Haraway’s figure of the cyborg, these artists questioned the physical impact of posthumanism on the human being. Two installations in particular will be analyzed because they utilize techniques that allow the artists to question the current form of the human body and of its visual representation: Andra Ursuta’s glass sculptures from the series Predators ‘R Us and Tishan Hsu’s Breath 7 (2022), Phone-Breath-Bed 2 (2021) and Watching 2 (2021).

This essay will analyze the significance of these works within the curation of the Biennale and the broader scope of representation of the human body in visual arts of the twenty-first century. How does Alemani’s “posthuman condition” manifest itself in sculptures of the human figure at the 59th Venice Biennale? And what does this reflect of the significance of the human body in the twenty-first century?

Through visual and textual analysis, the first part of this essay will analyze the translation of posthuman paradigms onto the body and the meaning of this process within Alemani’s curation. The second part will build on the conclusions of the first chapter. It will cross-analyze the place of the works in the Biennale with research on current cultural tropes in representating the human being.

Status Quaestionis

            The analysis of the works by Andra Ursuta and Tishan Hsu and the way they were curated by Cecilia Alemani at the 59th Venice Biennale, will rely on the double observation of the historical significance of the human body in visual arts representations and in socio-political conceptions. Posthumanism both describes and anticipates a radical change in our embodiment and definition of the human being.

Based on the cross-analysis of Nasheli Jiménez del Val’s account of the genealogy of the body in western thought and Hebert Read’s history of the representation of the human in (western) art, it is clear that as the definition of the human being changes, so must the way in which he sculpts or mirrors himself in the world. Authors such as Silvia Federici and Polona Tratnik have stressed the ways in which the physical form of the human being has been and is changing through the advent of technology and how this will affect the biopolitical paradigms of our socities.

Ando Arike is one of the only academic authors to have written on the future of art making under a posthuman condition. In 2001, Arike argued that with the advent of nano- and bio-technology that could potentially induce or communicate images or feelings from one brain to another, the representative quality of art would become obsolete. He speculated that art would have to counter this by enacting life itself, imagining and creating a new relationship with the tools around us.

Donna Haraway, a significant figure in feminist studies and posthuman research, provided a very useful concept for the imagination of alternative ways of dealing with this biopolitical shift in relation to our bodies: the cyborg. In A Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway argues that the expansion of the figure of the cybernetic organism can help remodel the fabricated boundaries between the human and the non-human.

Haraway also emphasizes the role that science fiction will play in the actualization of the cyborg, thus in the development of posthuman thought. In “Post-Apocalypse, Post-Human: Some Recent Developments,” Karen F. Stein explores the history of hybrid humanity in fiction and notices an important shift in twenty first century narratives: hybrid humans are embraced as possible solutions to the ecological and biopolitical crises currently faced by the human race.

The physical modification of the human body is thus coming to the forefront of research on the future of the definition of humanity both in academia and fiction. This essay will posit that there is research to be conducted on the correlation between the popularization of posthumanism, the advancement of technology into the corporeality of the human and the recent cultural shift to dystopian fiction in the west. It will argue that the visual hybrids present at the Biennale provide a basis for the analysis of a shift in the perception of the human being in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1: Curating Posthumanism: The Human Body and Technology

Aspirations of the 59th Venice Biennale

            The “Biennale di Venezia,” commonly called the Venice Biennale in English, was established in 1895, and became one of the most anticipated events in the contemporary art world. For the 59th edition of the Biennale, opening in the spring of 2022, the main exhibition was curated by Cecilia Alemani, an Italian woman, and was entitled “The Milk of Dreams.” This phrase was taken by Alemani from a book by Leonora Carrington, a british painter whose oeuvre set the tone for a large part of the curation of the Biennale. This book that Carrington wrote for her children is full of creatures and events that are in constant transformation and turmoil. Alemani chose to assimilate the artist’s imagination of a world that is in constant flux with contemporary academic literature on the definition of what is human (as well as what is not) and how that definition has shaped the relationships between the human and its surrounding universe. She refers to three main themes that tie the exhibition together: “(...) the representation of bodies and their metamorphoses; the relationship between individuals and technologies; the connection between bodies and the Earth.” In other words, the Biennale seeks to find new ways to define and therefore represent humanity, specifically under the pressure of technology that increasingly mediates our interactions with our vital surroundings.

Within the main exhibition, many works explored posthuman thought through the representation of the human body. Often grotesque, deformed, dismembered or mutated, the shape of the human figure is visibly under threat. This is especially visible through works that use casting techniques to directly manipulate the shape of the human body. One such work is Andra Ursuta’s installation at the Giardini venue: a selection of sculptures from her ongoing Predators ‘R Us series. Each work is made of lead crystal and consists of casts of varying objects such as some of Ursuta’s body parts, pieces of plastic waste, or cinema set props (see fig. 1 & 2). At the Biennale, Ursuta’s sculptures were described as “radical hybrid beings.” This hybridity exists on more than one plane of meaning.

They are hybrids in the sense that they represent a whole that is made of heterogeneous parts: Ursuta’s sculptural process is almost collage like. This hybridity is reinforced by the nature of the elements represented by the artist. Organic and inorganic subjects suddenly coexist within this new visual being. Ursuta also creates anachronisms, a kind of hybrid time, by manipulating distant and dissonent references. These include nods to classical sculpture and contemporary science fiction cinema. These juxtapositions deconstruct the human form and challenge traditional modes of representation of the human being.

In The Art of Sculpture, Herbert Read argues that the history of sculpture is inextricably tied to the history of the human body because it comes from a visceral need for the human to actualize its existence in the world. He mentions the overwhelming presence of the human body in Greek sculpture, beginning in the seventh century B.C., and the realism with which it was then represented, as a shift in intention from ritualistic, in the pre-historic period, to “metaphysical.” Sculpture was now a way to express human self-sufficiency. Read argues that although sculptors of the nineteenth century have veered away from the realism of such sculptures, the representation of the human body remains a central preoccupation and seeks the subordination of all other subjects, organic or inorganic.

Ursuta’s sculptures come in direct conflict with this idea that is still pervasive at the core of anthropocentric (human-centered) societies. She subverts classical forms of sculptural portraiture such as the bust (see fig. 1) by adding non-human appendages to casts of her own body, becoming constitutive, rather than subordinate, to the human figure. Through this, she also attacks the socio-political and cultural status of the human being that was implemented during Ancient Greece with the adage “man is the measure of all things,” which lies at the core of the current zeitgeist.


Ursuta’s work illustrates  the deconstruction of this principle, the turn to a post-humanist intellectual paradigm, through the dismemberment and hybridization of the body itself. As it is not the only installation at the Biennale to manipulate the human form in this way, the next section of this essay will analyze the purpose and significance of using the human body as medium through which meaning is relayed.

Casting the Human Body and Biopower

            Lost wax casting and casting of the human body in general, has a long history at the intersection of art and science. During the Renaissance, lost wax casting was used to understand human anatomy which in turn was thought to reveal the contents of the soul or character of human beings. Representations of the human body, that lay at the border between aesthetic creation and scientific research, were used to penetrate to the core of the body and thus the human itself, equating the physical with the moral. With the advent of imaging technologies such as the X-Ray and photography, anatomical casting was no longer of use to the medical field and became obsolete. It was only revived in the 20th century in the artistic sphere around the same time that the human figure and realism regained importance in art, after the figurative drought imposed by conceptualism and modernism.

Tishan Hsu, an American multidisciplinary artist shown at the Arsenale building of the Biennale, also utilized casting as a tool to fuse the human form with non-human extensions. Each of his works contain a unique pattern that Hsu creates by digitally distorting and juxtaposing enlarged images of skin, the pixels of screens, cells and other organic protrusions and orifices. In Breath 7 (see fig. 3), a cast face is emerging from this printed backdrop on the far left of the work. The rest of the pattern is perforated by more silicone fleshy appendages, an X-ray scan and other distorted, barely recognizable images of the human body.

Hsu uses inherently malleable methods of representation (silicone casting and digital manipulation) to merge the human figure with images of the technological interfaces that surround it. Hsu’s use of references to medical imagery and apparatus in Breath 7 but also Phone-Breath-Bed 2 (see fig. 4) expands on the ways in which imaging technologies, even those that we have accepted as beneficial to our health, have penetrated not only into the lives of human beings but into their bodies. This is an interesting discourse when compared to the history of body casting mentioned above.

Polona Tratnik, in “Body Visualizations and Power/Knowledge,” analyzes cast models of human anatomy of the Renaissance as directed towards the development of biopower. Introduced by Michel Foucault in 1978, biopower - the power of the social over life - supposedly has two subsets: anatomo-politics and biopolitics. Anatomo-politics is the conception of the body as a machine, and the process by which it is disciplined, its ressources extracted and optimized under systems of control. Biopolitics sees the human body as the mechanism on which the moderation of life or death is based: birth, health, mortality. These two “technologies” as Foucault calls them were both established and maintained through supervision and control and were aimed at harnessing the potentials of the human body. Tratnik argues that the development of imaging devices was meant not only to understand the body (and through the body understand the mind) but to gain power over it through knowledge.

Tishan Hsu visualizes this appropriation of the body by medicine: the body has no more secrets, its skin, through the X-ray is dissolved and reveals its bones, its organs make one with the tools that enter it. Hsu even uses photographs of surveillance cameras and their footage into his skin/pixel patterns to solidify the parallel between medical imaging, observation and control (see fig. 5). Here, like in Ursuta’s hybrids, the mode of representation of the human body is what forms its identity. In Hsu’s work, imaging technologies penetrate the human and control the very shapes of the body. In Ursuta’s work, reproduction and manipulation of the body through casting act as a subversion of classical sculptural human form.


This signals a turn away from Humanism, towards new ways of conceptualizing the human being through the body, but also highlights the double invasion of modern technology into human life: not only are our bodies physically modified by technology namely in the medical field, but the way in which our bodies are represented is itself constantly mediated by some imaging apparatus.

The Cyborg: Intersections of Fact and Fiction

            The description alongside both of these works at the Biennale, written by Madeline Weisburg, referred to a “cyborg” body. This following section will expand the analysis of the works within a posthumanist framework in parallel with the concept of the cyborg found in academic research. This will allow for a better understanding of the significance of the visual merging of the human body with non-human, non-organic elements. In the context of an exhibition based around posthumanism, we may look at Donna Haraway’s definition of the cyborg in her text A Cyborg Manifesto: “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.” It is precisely this negotiation of fact and fiction that the last part of this chapter shall explore in Ursuta’s hybrids and Hsu’s mutations.

What is the figure of the cyborg rooted in? In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku gives an overview of the current developments of technology in the realms of medicine, artificial intelligence, computer engineering and more. What posthuman researchers base their theories on relies on the analysis of these developments and more specifically on technologies capable of creating “robots, intelligent computers or synthetic life forms” that could transcend human control or understanding. The witnessing of nano-technology, bio-engineering and gene editing have pushed posthuman writers to conclude the following: the human body is now “conceived as a machine whose every process is amenable to intervention, reconfiguration, and replication (...)”

In 1983, Tishan Hsu wrote “I accept Modernism’s conclusion - the Self is lost. That’s one less thing to worry about. Freed from the “Self,” consciousness enters the “Object” - merges with the world.” If understood through the lens of Hsu’s work - which centers radical transgressions of the boundaries defining the human body from its surroundings - this phrase is a direct attempt at overturning the traditional western conceptions of the human body. In Body Between Materiality and Power, Nasheli Jimenez del Val introduces the conceptualization of the human body in early modern western thought, both as an “earthly imitation of the Christological body” and as a “categorical point of departure for establishing classifications in the relationships between the self and the world.” Both definitions, constituting basic tenants of Humanism, come under threat through the visualization of the figure of the cyborg as defined by Haraway.

Hsu later stated that he considers himself a cyborg, that his relationship to the technology surrounding him is cyborgian. Hsu’s work relies on the representation of this merging of human consciousness with its surroundings, those being computers, imaging devices, medical engineering and so on. By drawing on his personal experiences and analyses, Tishan Hsu’s cyborgs represent the social reality of the penetration of human life by technology. The notion of a fusion of human consciousness “with the world,” is especially significant if that world belongs to cyber (computer) space because it is a space composed of networks rather than unique entities. In this sense, the cyborg body is also a mass rather than individual being. The dissolution of human and non-human boundaries as well as the establishment of human life based on interrelated and interspecies communities are two of the main tenants of anti-anthropocentric posthumanism.

Ursuta’s hybrids rely on a similar premise. They refute the unicity and stability of the human form through the representation of this transition of consciousness from the “Self” to its vital surroundings. Ursuta plays on the border between fact and fiction by casting these props that reference two science fiction movies: Alien (1979) and Predator (1987). In both of these movies, humans are hunted by extra-terrestrial beings, the anatomies of which, are present in Ursuta’s hybrids (see fig. 1-2). This reference to iconic alien invasion narratives, highlights both the real current invasion of the body by imaging methods (be it a film camera or casting tools) but most importantly by all that is foreign - alien - to the human, and the dramatized fear of that invasion. In this sense, the cyborg becomes both the visual representation of the posthuman - as in the result of the enactment of posthuman values onto the human body - and the symbol of a fear of some de-naturalization of the human body, arguably being the remnant of western humanist conceptions of the human.


These artworks hold a special place in the discourse of the “posthuman condition” introduced by Alemani in the curatorial statement of the 59th Venice Biennale because they subvert the human form. They reveal the paradigms of biopower and the western conception of the body as impenetrable and holy, under which the human body is currently restrained. The figure of the cyborg, as a symbol that is both rooted in the social reality and in the imagination of fusions of the body and its surroundings, is a threat to these paradigms.

Chapter 2: Curating Dystopia: Purposes of Speculation

Speculative Methodologies

            Cecilia Alemani has divided the main exhibition into sections, sequenced by what she calls “time capsules.” These mini-exhibitions are meant to inform the predominant themes of the Biennale. One of these time capsules elaborate on the figure of the cyborg and introduces the last part of the main exhibition that harbors “apocalyptic scenarios and nuclear nightmares (...) industrial ruins, and disorienting landscapes.” This focus on the threat or doom of humanity as a species highlights the discrete running theme of dystopia within the exhibition and specifically within works that deal with imaging the human body. This following chapter will question the significance of speculation and dystopian narrative both as a methodology within the works and the  Biennale, and as a growing cultural phenomenon. How do they serve posthumanist reflections? And what is the significance of the current interest in visualizing dystopian narrative through the human body?

Dystopias are defined by Riven Barton as fictional worlds set after an apocalyptic event. Apocalypse is a biblical term that refers to “‘The complete final destruction of the world’ or ‘an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale.’” A dystopia represents a “struggle for the continuation of life” after such an event. Cultural iterations of dystopias are necessarily speculative endeavours and Barton argues that they are necessarily based on the exaggeration and criticism of current societal, political or cultural paradigms. Much like the figure of the cyborg, a dystopia is a social reality as well as a fictional creation.

As previously argued, Andra Ursuta and Tishan Hsu use the figure of the cyborg as a way to comment on the technological invasion of the human body as well as highlighting the strict boundaries of that body, as being remnants of western conceptions of the human. These works serve a “posthuman condition” by destabilizing many of the premises of humanist values. Their place alongside the other works of the exhibition however, highlights the themes of failure and transformation of the human body rather than its reconciliation with the world.

In the Arsenale building, Tishan Hsu’s cyborgs are surrounded by other bodies. Geumhyong Jeong’s installation , placed in the same room as Hsu, narrates the increasing closeness with which we are reaching the creation of autonomous robots and a state of interaction with them that will resemble the way we interact with other humans (see fig. 6). It explores the potential intimacy that will develop between humans and machines, to the point that we may not be able to live without them on an emotional level. Mire Lee’s kinetic sculpture resembles pumping, leaking organs. It is in fact tubes of clay and grease animated by motors in a visual transgression of boundaries between the organic and the inorganic (see fig. 7). It automatizes and violates the autonomy of the organic.

In the central pavilion where Ursuta’s work is located, Jana Euler presents a portrait of a man whose body has been completely warped, turned inside out in a large grotesque representation (see fig. 8). Simone Fattal presents Adam and Eve as mounds of unrecognizable material, digging at the origin story of humanity (see fig. 9). Sidsel Meineche Hansen sculpts the gendered commodified body in wood and plastic as nothing more than a recipient for consumption (see fig. 10). With seething irony, these works attack the politics inscribed in the human body. Through these deformed representations, they utilize the fear of the de-naturalization of the human body.


Among these works, Ursuta and Hsu’s hybrids become representative of this anticipation of loss of autonomy and disfiguration of the human body. This anticipation, acting as a speculation on the possible future of technological development, is highly connotative of dystopian narrative methodologies. The extent and potential of this speculative element can be investigated beyond the scope of Alemani’s curation in the Biennale.

Dystopia Inscribed in the 21st Century Body

            In Dystopia: A Natural History, Gregory Claeys argued that since the turn of the twentieth century, there has been a distinct “dystopian turn” in Western representations of the future of humanity in literature and film. According to Claeys, dystopia characterizes the current zeitgeist because humans live in increasingly contradictory paradigms. The biggest of these contradictions is the conception of the human as omnipotent and the unraveling of the current collapses in all aspects of capitalist societies and of the surroundings they are exploiting. Under these conditions, the human body is not exempt from alienation. As previously outlined, the body, according to Foucault, is a biopolitical reality: it is both used as a ressource to be exploited, and shaped to the ideals of western capitalist ends through scrutiny and control. 

Ando Arike argues that by the turn of the twenty-first century, the human body was now conceived of as “a machine whose every process is amenable to intervention, reconfiguration, and replication (...).” Under the double pressure of capitalist exploitation and technological submission, the concept of bodily autonomy seems more and more distant from any lived reality. This next section will investigate the extent and discursive potential of cultural manifestations of dystopian representations of the human body.

The advent and expansion of ecohorror, as described in the Posthuman Glossary is an interesting starting point. It is a subgenre of horror that seeks to stir our fear of the non-human physically impeding on the human. It both reflects our fear of “nature strikes back,” or parasite invasion narratives and questions the boundaries that these narratives cross as demarcations of the contemporary conception of the human. According to Christy Tidwell, the definition of ecohorror has evolved over the past decades to include not only stories of direct environmental attack on human individuals but also narratives of broader blurring of human/non-human worlds.

In “Post-Apocalypse, Post-Human: Some Recent Dystopias,” Karen F. Stein affirms this dystopian turn and adds that the premises of contemporary dystopias in literary fiction have shifted from political causes to environmental ones. She also argues that the issue of human nature being at the root of apocalyptic environmental and societal turmoil is spreading throughout fictional genres. This is where science-fiction intersects with posthuman reflection. According to Stein, works of fiction that address the issue of a human propensity for self-destrcution, raise the following questions: “what does it mean to be human? How much might we humans want to - or even have to - give up or modify so that we can prevent an apocalypse or, if necessary, survive in a post-apocalyptic future world?”

Stein argues that there has additionally been a significant change in the cultural attitude towards human hybrids. Dating back to Greek and Roman mythology, through the Industrial Revolution with Frankenstein’s monster and, later, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, hybrids have been conceived in fiction as subordinate to humans, until the end of the twentieth century. According to Stein, contemporary science fiction writers, in the face of human indifference to environmental collapse, utilize dystopian and apocalyptic scenarios to trigger action. She further states that one of the tools for this trigger is to posit that human hybrids, enhanced or genetically modified humans, may be more apt at survival and at the preservation of our currently decaying environment.

A study presented at the 2018 “Future Technologies Conference” surveyed a database of science fiction movies and animes to assess whether the kinds of body modifications present in these works could provide insight into the future of real technological interventions on the human body. Out of 100 movies, 18 were found to deal with body modification in one way or another and the conductors of the survey were able to conclude a common speculative warning against the shift from “reactive” body modifications (against disease, death or handicap) and “proactive” body modifications (in order to enhance individual human abilities). Authors such as Silvia Federici already tackle the biopolitical ramifications of current proactive body modifications ranging from plastic surgery to microchip implants.

Ultimately, posthuman reflection and dystopian fiction meet in the way they approach speculation on the future of the human body. Both domains are simultaneously concerned with identifying the alarming structures of socio-political paradigms and imagining alternatives to these structures. Christy Tidwell quotes Donna Haraway to emphasize the ambivalence of both posthuman research and ecohorror regarding the outcome of the proposed alternatives: “(a) great deal is at stake in such meetings (between species), and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no teleological warrant here, no assured happy or unhappy ending, socially, ecologically or scientifically.” Tishan Hsu and Ursuta’s representations of human hybrids at the Biennale oscillate between the representation of threat, of a fear of the dismembered body, and the visualization of neither positive nor negative alternatives to the paradigms that are harmful to the human body today.


Catastrophic representations of the human body in dystopian narratives are thus not only gaining traction and popularity but are also bridging the gap between science fiction and posthuman studies. This can be applied to the hybrid humans at stake in the visual works by Andra Ursuta and Tishan Hsu presented at the 59th Venice Biennale. Another work shown in Venice but outside Alemani’s curatorial agency, suggests that there may be a broadening interest in assessing the potentials of posthumanism through visualizing a dystopian body. 

Posthuman Visual Arts

            The Danish Pavilion, located in the Giardini venue, presented the work of Uffe Isolotto. The installation consisted of a recreated traditional Danish farm house which contained a variety of sculptures. Alongside different sculpted objects ranging from meat, to agricultural machinery, from bulbous organisms to restrictive clothing, two half human half horse creatures occupied two separate rooms of the house. One of the centaurs was laid on the floor seemingly in the middle of the act of giving birth (see fid. 11), the other appeared to have hung himself (see fig. 12). Like Andra Ursuta and Tishan Hsu, Isolotto uses casting and computer-aided modeling techniques to create his human mutations (in addition to taxidermy, 3D printing and painting).

The hyperrealistic sculptures that result from this assemblage of expert techniques and the juxtaposition of these centaurs in the traditional agricultural setting, create a work that appears to be a glance into the future of interspecies interrelations. The heavy presence of technology both in the creation process and in the visualization of certain objects also suggests a reflection on the current presence of technology in human life. By specifically visualizing ancient hybrids, centaurs, Isolotto refers to a parallel that several future studies authors make: the development of biotechnology reaching the potential to allow humans abilities that were assigned to pagan Gods in ancient mythology. This signals to the viewer that an extreme has been reached in our exploration of human biology.

These works of art seem to be preoccupied with two adjacent questions: what is the future of the human body under speculated technological developments? And what happens to the definition of humanity when the human body is heavily and intimately modified? Essentially, what does the posthuman body look like? Will it remain recognizable, organic, unified? What is certain is that these representations of the human body signal a cultural awareness of the current significance of the body and the ways in which it is being transformed by technology. If these reflections reach further and further into the cultural mainstream, will the representation of the human body become increasingly confined to dystopic and apocalyptic codes?

In 2001, Ando Arike argued that the nature of art was bound to radically change due to the extreme invasion of the human body by technology. He made a parallel between Walter Benjamin’s anticipation of the radical shift in the place of value of artworks with the advent of photography and cinema in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Arike argues that the state of technology at the turn of the twenty-first century has grown past a scale that is appropriate “to human self-understanding and expression.” These technologies include cloning, gene editing, and brain scanning. He suggests that under this technological pressure, art will have to abandon the task of representation and take on the role of enacting life itself through the redefinition of the scale of human technologies.

As has been demonstrated in this essay, the translation of posthuman thought into the curation of artworks, in this instance at the 59th Venice Biennale, has involved profound explorations on the definition of humanity through the human body’s form. These explorations are at a state of warning of speculated threat based on the analysis of the current status of the human body under capitalism. These representations of human hybrids remain within the realm of the cautionary tale, of our state of processing the reality of the damages done to our bodies and our surroundings by technology (the pace of which does not pause). In this way, they already signal the limits of dystopian art: it warns rather than enacts.

Ando Arike’s prediction of the future of art under posthuman development has been probed by artists of the twenty first century. In 2011, French artist Marion Laval-Jeantet gave a controversial performance in which she wore mechanic prosthetic hooves and had horse blood injected into her own. Alongside this performance, Laval-Jeantet paired up with an ethologist to closely study equine communication. She also subsequently freeze-dried her hybridized blood. This art piece entitled “Que le cheval vive en moi” (“May the Horse Live Within Me”) utilized complex medical and mechanic technologies in order to physically bring the artist in biological proximity with another species. Artworks such as this that blur the lines between art, science and life make leaps for posthuman thought and research but open up myriad ethical and biopolitical questions. This in turn makes them hard to present as art in the current establishments of the art world which still resides on rigid consumer driven foundations.

As previously mentioned, sculpture was one of the very first recorded forms of artistic creation and namely served the purpose of human self-identification: I can model myself in the physical world, therefore I am. Representations of the human body have pervaded art history and made a strong return in contemporary art in the 1960s. Today, as research on the political agency of the human body under capitalism and the anthropocene continues to reveal major contradictions in the definition of the human being, these representations tend to reflect these contradictions. There are two ways to imagine what posthuman sculpture, and visual arts in general, may look like (or entail). The first would be a radical removal of the human figure from its pedestal. It would represent a turn to and aestheticization of all that is non-human in an attempt to apply to it the same value that is applied to the representation of human form. The second would be similar to the works presented at the Biennale: a representation of ways in which humans can navigate the world as composites of it not as rulers. In its radical, fully completed form, posthuman art would require that we completely leave behind examinations of our physical presence and agency in the world.

Conclusion

            The focus of the 59th Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani, revolved around the reconfiguration of how to define humanity and its relationship with other species, both organic and inorganic. The works by Tishan Hsu and Andra Ursuta addressed the politics involved with the representation of the human body in a world increasingly dictated by the paces of technology. Through the figure of the cyborg and by borrowing visual and narrative codes of dystopian science fiction, these works explored the reconfiguration of the human body both under present conditions of capitalist and anthropocentric living and under imagined future developments of technology into the most intimate corners of human life.

On the one hand, these pieces challenged the unity of the human figure as well as the history of its representation in art. They aligned themselves with the posthuman endeavour to disrupt the hegemony of human representation in sculpture. On the other hand, the focus of their attention remained the consequences of the human-made technological environmnent on the human body, its integrity, its biological identity and its future. In this sense, the posthuman condition that Cecilia Alemani refers to in her curatorial statement, focused on the imagination of new interspecies alliances and ways of defining interactions between the organic and inorganic, somewhat recedes behind the threat of the disfiguration of the human body.

As posthumanism advances into more mainstream cultural manifestations, like visual arts, literature and film, the representation of the human body remains at the forefront of the discourse in these iterations. This phenomenon, however, can inform new questions posthuman research. Will anxieties surrounding the human body found in science fiction transpire further into the art world, mirroring a collective anticipation of a dismembered, cyborg body? Will this supersede efforts to de-centralize the human being from considerations of the universe in other fields? Can we imagine a complete de-centering of the human being from the creation of art that seeks to make sense of our experiences in the world?

As the human body changes, so must the representations it creates of itself in the world. The advent of biotechnology, gene editing and cloning imposes a foreseeable explosion of the way humans understand the limits between their bodies and the technological appendages surrounding them. The presence of cast human hybrids at the 59th Venice Biennale could indicate that as this progresses, artists, mirroring collective societal turmoil, will actually become increasingly obsessed with representing the human form, either in order to preserve the image of a “natural state,” or to further warn of the biopolitical consequences of these modifications. It is also possible that, similarly to the advent of modernism in reaction to the reaching of certain limits in realism, artists will try to completely remove the human body from representations of the human experience. Ironically, this may become possible with the development of the very technologies that threaten the body today.

Whether posthumans exist or not depends, in the academic field, on the definitions of humanity and of technology. What is certain is that as posthumanism develops further into the cultural mainstream, most likely pushed by the catastrophic march forward of capitalism and technology, new representations of the human form will arise. They will either end up serving a struggling Humanism, obsessed with the human’s survival against its hostile environment, or attempt real embodiments of life outside the control of biopower. Whether this will include embracing technology into the human body or rejecting it completely, remains to be seen.

Appendix

Fig. 1: Andra Ursuta, Impersonal Growth, 2020, Lead crystal, 67 x 54.6 x 17.8 cm. Photo courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery.



Fig. 2: Andra Ursuta, Predators ‘R Us, 2020, Lead crystal, 73.7 x 68.6 x 132.1 cm. Photo courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery.




Fig. 3: Tishan Hsu, Breath 7, 2022, UV cured inkjet, acrylic, silicone on wood. Photo courtesy of Michel Abreu Gallery.



Fig. 4: Tishan Hsu, Phone-Breath-Bed 2, 2021, polycarbonate, silicone, stainless steel wire cloth, UV cured inkjet, silicone on wood, steel, plastic. Photo courtesy of Michel Abreu Gallery.



Fig. 5: Tishan Hsu, Watching 2, 2021, UV cured inkjet, silicone on wood. Photo courtesy of Michel Abreu Gallery.




Fig. 6: Geumhyung Jeong, Toy Prototype, 2021, Sculptures and video installation

DIY robotic sculptures built of various materials including aluminium profiles and DC motors, remote controllers made of medical simulators and joysticks, and 9 videos added in 2022 for the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Photo and description courtesy of Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe.



Fig. 7: Mire Lee, Endless House: Holes and Drips, 2022, ceramic, lithium carbonate and iron oxide glaze liquid, pump, motor and other mixed media. Photo and description courtesy of Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe.



Fig. 8: Jana Euler, Venice Void, 2022, oil on linen. Photo courtesy of Photo Catapult, Anton de Haan.



Fig. 9: Simone Fattal, Adam & Eve, 2021, bronze. Photo courtesy of Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe.




Fig. 10: Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Untitled (Sex Doll),2018-2019, ball jointed wooden doll. Photo courtesy of Marco Cappelletti.



Fig. 11: Uffe Isolotto, We Walked the Earth, 2022, silicon, taxidermy, various materials. Photo courtesy of Ali Foroughi & Laura Mackenzie-Wells, Jungle Magazine.




Fig. 12: Uffe Isolotto, We Walked the Earth, 2022, silicon, taxidermy, various materials. Photo courtesy of Ali Foroughi & Laura Mackenzie-Wells, Jungle Magazine.



Illustration Source List


Fig. 1. Accessed October 10.

https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2021/andra-ursuta-void-fill

Fig. 2. Accessed October 10.

https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2021/andra-ursuta-void-fill

Fig. 3. Accessed December 12.

https://miguelabreugallery.com/exhibitions/skin-screen-grass/

Fig. 4 Accessed December 12.

https://miguelabreugallery.com/exhibitions/skin-screen-grass/

Fig. 5. Accessed December 12.

https://miguelabreugallery.com/exhibitions/skin-screen-grass/

Fig. 6. Accessed December 20.

https://universes.art/en/venice-biennale/2022/the-milk-of-dreams-tour-5/geumhyung-jeong

Fig. 7. Accessed December 20.

https://universes.art/en/venice-biennale/2022/the-milk-of-dreams-tour-5/mire-lee

Fig. 8. Accessed December 20.

https://www.belgianpavilion.be/nl/projects/central-pavilion-2022

Fig. 9. Accessed December 20.

https://universes.art/en/venice-biennale/2022/the-milk-of-dreams-tour-1/simone-fattal

Fig. 10. Accessed December 20.

https://rodeo-gallery.com/exhibitions/the-milk-of-dreams-smh/

Fig. 11. Accessed December 22.

https://jungle-magazine.co.uk/the-milk-of-dreams-the-59th-biennale-darte-venice-2022/

Fig. 12. Accessed December 22.

https://jungle-magazine.co.uk/the-milk-of-dreams-the-59th-biennale-darte-venice-2022/

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