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Themesicon: navigation pathCyborg Bodiesicon: navigation pathMonstrous Bodies
 
Dandy Dust (Scheirl, Hans), 1998Dollspace (da Rimini, Francesca)Host (Lucas, Kristin), 1997
 
 
 

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man of control is undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network. Everywhere ‹surfing› has already replaced the older ‹sports›.»

Fluidity has become the dominant principle of postindustrial capitalism and its subjects, and for Deleuze, too, it is derived from the principle of numerics. And as do Castells and Haraway, Deleuze also makes it clear that with respect to these transformations it is not just a question of a «technological evolution,» but «even more profoundly, a mutation of capitalism….» Although he may base his conceptuality on that of computer science, Deleuze clearly points out that these phenomena are effects of capitalist or neoliberal policies, i.e. effects which must be viewed over a longer period of history, in which time and again ‹machines› or cyborgs have stood for certain socio-economic concepts.

As the works of art discussed above indicate, these processes are repeatedly concerned with the question of what these processes of transformation mean for humans and what kinds of subjects they produce. Thus Sobchack not only identifies the morph with the information age, but also with new types of subject

 

concepts. She writes: «At the same moment, its very fluidity destabilizes dominant Western metaphysics (primarily focused on essences, categories, and identities, including those of gender and race) and dramatizes instead a ‹process metaphysics› that is less about ‹being› than about ‹becoming›.» [18] Donna Haraway speaks of «cyborg subjectivities» or of «The Female Man,» Rosi Braidotti of «monsters,» and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari speak of «becoming» instead of being. All of these subject concepts are based on concepts of fluidity, transformation and mutation. They are body and subject concepts that spring from, embody and symptomatize the relations of domination in the information society; however, at the same time they are also their resistant traversals and effects. The protagonists who appear in media art projects such as «Dandy Dust,» «I.K.U.,» «Dollspace,» or «Host» embody these kinds of unruly and distopian/utopian cyborgs. [19]

The Fluid Femaleness of the Information Age

A further aspect in this debate concerning fluid digital bodies is added if we examine the gender images they

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