Artistic Exploration of Bodily Prosthetics

Abstract

The advent of the computer has encouraged a surge in investigations into prosthetics by artists and others inquiring into the potential of bio-technoscientific invention to overcome the limitations of the so-called ‘normal’ human body (brain included) through technological augmentation and genetic manipulation. However this trend has tended to obscure a lesserknown trajectory of inquiry-driven practice undertaken by artists whose bodies have become both physically and neurologically impaired through accident or illness. From the perspective of artist living with such impairment, a critical artistic inquiry is conducted that intersects two prevailing notions of the prosthesis as they are imagined and enacted by artists: compensatory prosthetic augmentation of the so-called ‘disabled’ body, and bio-tech prosthetic ‘enhancement’ of so-called ‘normal’ (or ‘able’) bodies for a high-tech future. This exegesis reflects critically on a series of sculptural works arising from this investigation that were created for both contemporary gallery context and public places. It elaborates the transformations that occurred – technological, methodological, psychological, and conceptual - when 'disability' became the locus of artistic engagement with cyborg figurations in contemporary cultural discourses.