[Nettime-bold] Again Another Axis Action

Press release 1 mei 2000

Axis @ Inside Out

Exhibition including 4 interactive projects about the ‘interior’ of the body

Dutch premiere of 3 international cd-roms

9 - 14 may 2000 (12.30-18.00) Impakt festival, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Sterrenwacht Sonnenborgh, Sonneburg 2, (free entrance)

13 may 2000 (14.00-16.00) Presentation in the Couch Club,

't Hoogt 4, Utrecht (free entrance)

curated by Deanna Herst, Axis

During the Impakt festival in Utrecht Axis presents ‘Inside Out’, an exhibition including three cd-roms and a website about the ‘interior‘ of the bio-technological human body.

New technologies have produced radical changes in the human body. Protheses, facelifts, sex-change operations and implantations bring "man as a construction" ever closer. Until now representations of the body primarily focused on the consequences for the external appearance of humans.

Jane Prophet, Patricia Piccinini, Linda Dement and Mouchette confront the viewer with the "interior" of the new body. In their interactive projects, in a critical but also often humorous way they raise the consequences of bio-technology for discussion, and pose questions about the relation of identity and the body.

Participants

LUMP-CD, (cd-rom, 1999, AUS) Patricia Piccinini/Peter Hennessey

LUMP-CD is an expedition through the optimistically tinted 3D world of Patricia Piccinini's biotechnological enterprise The Mutant Genome Project (TMGP). TMGP has developed the first "designer baby" in the world, the "LUMP." LUMPs are available in many colors, sexes and shapes, and hardly fulfil the definition of "human" any more. LUMPCD is a playful commentary on the ethical questions surrounding biotechnology and genetic manipulation.

www.lumpcd.com

In My Gash, (cd-rom, 1999, AUS) Linda Dement

The depressed, abused, criminal and dangerous "Lying Ugly Mess Bitch" plays the central role in In My Gash. Her body functions as a visual archive for her anything but rosy life story. The interface consists of animations of apertures in her body, which afford the user access to her horror world.

The Internal Organs of a Cyborg, (cd-rom, 1999, GB) Jane Prophet

The Internal Organs of a Cyborg is about the blurring of the boundaries between man and machine, between "human" and "post-human," and about the definition of the physical "Self" in contemporary culture, governed by technology. In this interactive photo-novel in science fiction style Prophet shows the influence of pharmaceutical manipulations on the body of a cyborg.

http://www.cairn.demon.co.uk/cyborg/cyborg.htm

Flesh and Blood, Mouchette: www.mouchette.org/flesh

The "digi-persona" Mouchette, notorious for the mythology that has formed around her "true" identity, presents her physical form in Flesh and Blood. But nevertheless, she still remains anonymous now: the interface consists of macro-shots of her tongue, eyes, nose and ears. She lets the audience become acquainted with her parents through this sensory path. Then follows an unexpected confrontation with her "flesh and blood."

* For information or press-images please contact Axis (publicity: Margriet van Heesch) or www.axisvm.nl. (press-kit on-line)

* For more information about Impakt festival: www.impakt.nl

Inside Out is also being programmed in July by VP_be (www.brussels2000.org/vp) as part of Brussels Cultural Capital 2000.