ARTBASE (3)
PORTFOLIO (2)
BIO
Christina McPhee http://christinamcphee.net
Ana Maria Uribe: a tribute
------ Forwarded Message
From: "Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>
This brief on the long life of Argentinian Ana Maria Uribe deserves to be
passed along, apologies for cross posting...
She was to be our guest on the empyre list in March, but, graciously, told
us at the end of February that she could not commit to it. Little did we
know how close she was to the end of her life.
Christina
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The Argentine visual poet and web.artist Ana Maria Uribe passed away March
5, 2004.
Ana Maria's involvement in visual poetry was an important part of her life
for thirty five years. In her first post to the webartery list in May 2001,
she said:
"I started with visual poetry in the late 60's after seeing some of
Apollinaire's poems and Morgenstern's "Night Song of the Fish". Shortly
afterwards I met Edgardo Antonio Vigo, who was then editing a magazine
called "Diagonal Cero", devoted to visual poetry and mail art, and other
poets such as Luis Pazos and Jorge de Lujan Gutierrez. They all lived in La
Plata, a town which is 50 km from Buenos Aires, where I live, and we
communicated by ordinary mail, either because there was a shortage of
telephones at that time or to save costs, I don't remember which. I still
keep some of the letters..."
She started developing her web site in 1997. At that point, the only other
Argentine visual writing site on the net I was aware of was Postypographika
by Fabio Doctorovich, which has since gone offline not long after the
economic collapse in Argentina during 2001.
Ana Maria's web site is divided into "Tipoemas" and "Anipoemas", ie,
typographical and animated poems. As she said in an interview by Jorge Luiz
Antonio,
"Rather than being a source of inspiration, getting to know other digital
poets via the Internet has helped me a lot in many ways. My source of
inspiration - as I say elsewhere - are the letters themselves. I never
participated in a collaborative work, although I made pieces for certain
websites, like "Zoo", for "The Banner Art Collective" and "Deseo - Desejo -
Desire" (http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/inflect/01/uribe/eroticos.swf), for
Muriel Frega, who was putting up a page on desire. Exchanges in sites like
Webartery taught me many things I might otherwise have missed or never
tried."
Looking at her work, we see the secret life of letters and their rendering
in a style that is much influenced by the concrete work of the fifties and
sixties--that was a cultural heritage and way of knowing for Ana Maria from
the sixties through the turn of the century. Her web site was not simply a
transposition of her earlier work to the new medium, however. The sense of
motion and change, and the sense of the carnivalesque, the life of letters,
the sense of proceeding via engagement and celebration of life comes into
her anipoemas in memorable and exciting ways. As she said, her source of
inspiration was the letters themselves, and this gives her work both an
international and enduring quality. She was conversant in about seven
languages. Language, reading, writing, translation and travelling the world,
getting to know it from many perspectives, was a crucial part of her life.
I invited Ana Maria to be a featured guest on empyre with Regina, Jorge, and
Alexandre some months ago. She had told me earlier of her bad health and
surgery, but I was not clear on how bad it was. She did not want others to
be told that she was ill, and it seemed by her reticence about her health
that it was quite bad indeed. She eventually declined the invitation because
of her health and told me that she "could not make plans for March."
Ana Maria loved to travel. She spent considerable time in India and travels
through Asia and the Americas. I recall that during the time war was widely
publicized as an immanent possibility between Pakistan and India over
Kashmir, Ana Maria was travelling in or near Kashmir and sent posts to the
webartery list describing the holidaying and enjoyment going on in the area
where war was apparently the last thing on peoples' minds and considered to
be a barely existent possibility. "Things sometimes look worse from far
away" she said. Hers was a very close look into poetry.
Her poetry, her correspondence, and her massive assistance with translation
into Spanish of the entire Paris Connection project we worked on together
last year, and her encouragements remain with me amid her extrordinary life
of letters. Her work spans thirty five years of thinking and feeling and
living through visual and, latterly, digital language and poetry.
There is a mirror of her work on my site at http://vispo.com/uribe . I would
like to add to this mirror writing about her work and any work that
addresses hers. Please contact me if you know of such writing or works or
wish to contribute to what will be an ongoing archive in this regard. If you
are familiar with her work and would like to write about it on empyre,
please do so. As I mentioned, she had been invited to be featured this month
with Regina, Jorge, and aLe. It did not become evident to her until February
8 that she could not. One of the last emails I received from her was this:
"Jim,
Although three days ago I accepted your invitation to the empyre debate, I
have had a lot of problems since then, and I will therefore have to decline
it.
My apologies to you all and I hope we may do some other collaboration in the
future.
Besos and regards,
Ana Maria"
My heart goes out to Ana Maria and her family and friends. It is with deep
regret that I inform you of her passing which I learned of last week from
her brother Diego. Her work and influence remains, though, and it is with
respect and admiration that I turn to experience her poetry again.
ja
********************************
Ana Maria's site:
http://amuribe.tripod.com
http://vispo.com/uribe
Ana Maria at arteonline.arq.br:
http://www.iis.com.br/~regvampi/museu/livros/uribe.htm
http://www.arteonline.arq.br/museu/poesiadig.htm
Ana Maria at Ubu.com:
http://www.ubu.com/contemp/uribe/uribe.html
Ana Maria at Iowa Review:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/uribe/uribe.html
Ana Maria at BeeHive:
http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_apps41/app_c.html
Ana Maria at Inflect:
http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/inflect/01/uribe/eroticos.swf
An interview of Ana Maria by Jorge Luiz Antonio
http://www.officinadopensamento.com.br/officina/entre-vistas/entre-vistas_an
a_maria_uribe.htm
Ana Maria did all the translations into Spanish of all the work at
http://vispo.com/thefrenchartists
David Daniels has done a visual poem about Ana Maria at
http://www.thegatesofparadise.com/humans/ANA%20MARIA%20URIBE.pdf
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
------ End of Forwarded Message
From: "Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>
This brief on the long life of Argentinian Ana Maria Uribe deserves to be
passed along, apologies for cross posting...
She was to be our guest on the empyre list in March, but, graciously, told
us at the end of February that she could not commit to it. Little did we
know how close she was to the end of her life.
Christina
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The Argentine visual poet and web.artist Ana Maria Uribe passed away March
5, 2004.
Ana Maria's involvement in visual poetry was an important part of her life
for thirty five years. In her first post to the webartery list in May 2001,
she said:
"I started with visual poetry in the late 60's after seeing some of
Apollinaire's poems and Morgenstern's "Night Song of the Fish". Shortly
afterwards I met Edgardo Antonio Vigo, who was then editing a magazine
called "Diagonal Cero", devoted to visual poetry and mail art, and other
poets such as Luis Pazos and Jorge de Lujan Gutierrez. They all lived in La
Plata, a town which is 50 km from Buenos Aires, where I live, and we
communicated by ordinary mail, either because there was a shortage of
telephones at that time or to save costs, I don't remember which. I still
keep some of the letters..."
She started developing her web site in 1997. At that point, the only other
Argentine visual writing site on the net I was aware of was Postypographika
by Fabio Doctorovich, which has since gone offline not long after the
economic collapse in Argentina during 2001.
Ana Maria's web site is divided into "Tipoemas" and "Anipoemas", ie,
typographical and animated poems. As she said in an interview by Jorge Luiz
Antonio,
"Rather than being a source of inspiration, getting to know other digital
poets via the Internet has helped me a lot in many ways. My source of
inspiration - as I say elsewhere - are the letters themselves. I never
participated in a collaborative work, although I made pieces for certain
websites, like "Zoo", for "The Banner Art Collective" and "Deseo - Desejo -
Desire" (http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/inflect/01/uribe/eroticos.swf), for
Muriel Frega, who was putting up a page on desire. Exchanges in sites like
Webartery taught me many things I might otherwise have missed or never
tried."
Looking at her work, we see the secret life of letters and their rendering
in a style that is much influenced by the concrete work of the fifties and
sixties--that was a cultural heritage and way of knowing for Ana Maria from
the sixties through the turn of the century. Her web site was not simply a
transposition of her earlier work to the new medium, however. The sense of
motion and change, and the sense of the carnivalesque, the life of letters,
the sense of proceeding via engagement and celebration of life comes into
her anipoemas in memorable and exciting ways. As she said, her source of
inspiration was the letters themselves, and this gives her work both an
international and enduring quality. She was conversant in about seven
languages. Language, reading, writing, translation and travelling the world,
getting to know it from many perspectives, was a crucial part of her life.
I invited Ana Maria to be a featured guest on empyre with Regina, Jorge, and
Alexandre some months ago. She had told me earlier of her bad health and
surgery, but I was not clear on how bad it was. She did not want others to
be told that she was ill, and it seemed by her reticence about her health
that it was quite bad indeed. She eventually declined the invitation because
of her health and told me that she "could not make plans for March."
Ana Maria loved to travel. She spent considerable time in India and travels
through Asia and the Americas. I recall that during the time war was widely
publicized as an immanent possibility between Pakistan and India over
Kashmir, Ana Maria was travelling in or near Kashmir and sent posts to the
webartery list describing the holidaying and enjoyment going on in the area
where war was apparently the last thing on peoples' minds and considered to
be a barely existent possibility. "Things sometimes look worse from far
away" she said. Hers was a very close look into poetry.
Her poetry, her correspondence, and her massive assistance with translation
into Spanish of the entire Paris Connection project we worked on together
last year, and her encouragements remain with me amid her extrordinary life
of letters. Her work spans thirty five years of thinking and feeling and
living through visual and, latterly, digital language and poetry.
There is a mirror of her work on my site at http://vispo.com/uribe . I would
like to add to this mirror writing about her work and any work that
addresses hers. Please contact me if you know of such writing or works or
wish to contribute to what will be an ongoing archive in this regard. If you
are familiar with her work and would like to write about it on empyre,
please do so. As I mentioned, she had been invited to be featured this month
with Regina, Jorge, and aLe. It did not become evident to her until February
8 that she could not. One of the last emails I received from her was this:
"Jim,
Although three days ago I accepted your invitation to the empyre debate, I
have had a lot of problems since then, and I will therefore have to decline
it.
My apologies to you all and I hope we may do some other collaboration in the
future.
Besos and regards,
Ana Maria"
My heart goes out to Ana Maria and her family and friends. It is with deep
regret that I inform you of her passing which I learned of last week from
her brother Diego. Her work and influence remains, though, and it is with
respect and admiration that I turn to experience her poetry again.
ja
********************************
Ana Maria's site:
http://amuribe.tripod.com
http://vispo.com/uribe
Ana Maria at arteonline.arq.br:
http://www.iis.com.br/~regvampi/museu/livros/uribe.htm
http://www.arteonline.arq.br/museu/poesiadig.htm
Ana Maria at Ubu.com:
http://www.ubu.com/contemp/uribe/uribe.html
Ana Maria at Iowa Review:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/uribe/uribe.html
Ana Maria at BeeHive:
http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_apps41/app_c.html
Ana Maria at Inflect:
http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/inflect/01/uribe/eroticos.swf
An interview of Ana Maria by Jorge Luiz Antonio
http://www.officinadopensamento.com.br/officina/entre-vistas/entre-vistas_an
a_maria_uribe.htm
Ana Maria did all the translations into Spanish of all the work at
http://vispo.com/thefrenchartists
David Daniels has done a visual poem about Ana Maria at
http://www.thegatesofparadise.com/humans/ANA%20MARIA%20URIBE.pdf
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
------ End of Forwarded Message
Re: updated molotov web ring
New for Joy
Molotovspacelab
<http://www.naxsmash.net/bloodellipse/text/disastersofwar(molotov).html>
Best,
Christina
--
<www.naxsmash.net>
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.inscapes.com>
Molotovspacelab
<http://www.naxsmash.net/bloodellipse/text/disastersofwar(molotov).html>
Best,
Christina
--
<www.naxsmash.net>
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.inscapes.com>
Machine Project and Superbunker present Page_Space LA
Apologies for crossposting..........
------ Forwarded Message
From: "Anton Soderman" <ansoderman@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 23:14:50 +0000
Machine Project and Superbunker present the page_space show from February
28 to March 14. Join us for an opening from 5 to 8pm on Saturday the 28th
at Machine Project, 1200 D North Alvarado Los Angeles.
The page_space show at Machine Project includes sculptural work by Alexandra
Grant based on text by Michael Joyce, "Untitled Game" by Sara Roberts,
interactive video by Karolina Sobecka, and a showing of Arteroids created
by Jim Andrews with text from Christina McPhee and Helen Thorington.
The page_space show also offers a physical installation of the <a
href="http://www.superbunker.com/machinepoetics/page_space.html">page_space
project</a> -- an experiment which reverses the usual collaboration between
writing and design. The page_space programmer/writers are: Simon Biggs,
Lluis Calvo, geniwate, Loss Pequeno Glazier, Deena Larsen, Jason Nelson,
Brian Kim Stefans, Pedro Valdeolmillos and Jody Zellen.
Fmi please dontact Braxton at ansoderman@hotmail.com
cm
--
Slipstream transmedias : soundart performance cinema installation
architectures network theory
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.naxsmash.net>
<www.naxsmash.net/inscapes>
------ Forwarded Message
From: "Anton Soderman" <ansoderman@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 23:14:50 +0000
Machine Project and Superbunker present the page_space show from February
28 to March 14. Join us for an opening from 5 to 8pm on Saturday the 28th
at Machine Project, 1200 D North Alvarado Los Angeles.
The page_space show at Machine Project includes sculptural work by Alexandra
Grant based on text by Michael Joyce, "Untitled Game" by Sara Roberts,
interactive video by Karolina Sobecka, and a showing of Arteroids created
by Jim Andrews with text from Christina McPhee and Helen Thorington.
The page_space show also offers a physical installation of the <a
href="http://www.superbunker.com/machinepoetics/page_space.html">page_space
project</a> -- an experiment which reverses the usual collaboration between
writing and design. The page_space programmer/writers are: Simon Biggs,
Lluis Calvo, geniwate, Loss Pequeno Glazier, Deena Larsen, Jason Nelson,
Brian Kim Stefans, Pedro Valdeolmillos and Jody Zellen.
Fmi please dontact Braxton at ansoderman@hotmail.com
cm
--
Slipstream transmedias : soundart performance cinema installation
architectures network theory
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.naxsmash.net>
<www.naxsmash.net/inscapes>
FW: [CTHEORY] Article 137 - The Cyborg Mother: A Breached Boundary
------ Forwarded Message
From: Christina McPhee <christinamcphee@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 16:24:23 -0800 (PST)
To: christina112@earthlink.net
Subject: Fwd: [CTHEORY] Article 137 - The Cyborg Mother: A Breached Boundary
--- ctheory@lists.uvic.ca wrote:
> Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 12:57:37 -0800
> To: ctheory@lists.uvic.ca
> From: ctheory@lists.uvic.ca
> Subject: [CTHEORY] Article 137 - The Cyborg Mother:
> A Breached Boundary
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
> CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE
> VOL 27, NOS 1-2
> *** Visit CTHEORY Online:
> http://www.ctheory.net ***
>
> Article 137 04/02/04 Editors: Arthur and
> Marilouise Kroker
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
>
>
>
> The Cyborg Mother: A Breached Boundary
>
>
==========================================================
>
>
> ~Jaimie Smith-Windsor~
>
>
>
> Why not tell a story in a new way? Why not think in
> unfinished ways?
> Without fixity? Without finality? Ask questions
> without answers.
> Without presuppositions and causes and effects and
> linear time. Why
> not. Why not "whisk yourself away from your
> comfortable
> position?"[1] When we live in a world of fractured
> identities and
> broken boundaries, why not rebel against yourself,
> or the
> technologies of "yourself" and discover new ways of
> being? Reconcile
> that everything is being shattered. Identity is
> being shattered and
> technology is picking up the pieces, and there
> stands before us an
> infinitude of recombinant possibility. Rewriting
> history becomes
> possible:
>
> The time of history passes through the stories
> of individuals:
> their birth, their experience...[2]
>
>
> The birth of my daughter:
> -------------------------
>
> Aleah Quinn Smith-Windsor
>
> born: January 31st, 2003
>
>
> A few days after Quinn was born, this quote
> appeared, written beside
> her incubator:
>
> Every blade of grass has an angel that bends
> over it and
> whispers, grow, grow. Anon.
>
> It was a near-fatal birth. Quinn was born at
> twenty-four and a half
> weeks gestation, three and a half months before her
> due date. Her
> birth weight was 700 grams, about one pound and a
> half.
>
> February 1, 2003 -- It is difficult to imagine
> such a tiny,
> perfect human being. Her feet are no larger
> than two
> fingernails. Her legs are about the same size
> as adult fingers,
> femurs measuring 4.5 centimeters. Her eyebrows
> curve like
> fallen eyelashes above her eyes, waiting to be
> wished upon.
>
>
> Morphology after the birth of my daughter:
> ------------------------------------------
>
> Immediately after Quinn's lungs were cleared she
> was incubated,
> stabilized and flown, with the Neonate Team, by way
> of helicopter
> ambulance, to the Special Care Nursery at the
> British Columbia
> Children's Hospital in Vancouver. We got to see her
> for a minute,
> tangled beneath the cords of her life support
> machines.
>
> February 2, 2003 -- A pump pushes breast milk
> down her throat,
> through a tube that goes into her belly.
> Sixty-five breaths per
> minute are administered by a Drager 2000
> Ventilator. She
> receives extra nutrition through an artificial
> umbilical line,
> blood-products and medications through an
> Intra Venous.
> Electrodes cover her body, measure her breaths
> and heart beats,
> her temperature, oxygen saturation and blood
> pressure.
>
>
> Motherhood -- a Breached Boundary:
> ----------------------------------
>
> My daughter's birth was a post-human, cyborg
> moment. She became
> cyborg, "the illegitimate child of the
> twentieth-century
> technological dynamo -- part human, part machine,
> never completely
> either."[3] Using this moment to grapple with the
> concept and
> implications of cyborg culture reveals some
> important questions about
> the amalgamation between the technological and the
> biological, and
> "not just in the banal meat-meets-metal sense."[4]
> Breaching the
> bio-techno boundary forces an engagement with "new
> and complex
> understandings of 'life', consciousness, and the
> distinction (or lack
> of distinction) between the biological and the
> technological."[5]
> Becoming cyborg is about the simultaneous
> externalization of the
> nervous system and internalization of the machine.
> Thus symbiosis of
> human and machine makes possible the genesis of the
> cyborg
> consciousness. Ultimately, the breached boundary of
> the human body
> is a diasporatic phenomenon: the dispersion of an
> originally
> homogeneous entity (the body), "the diasporas of
> the human condition
> into several mutually incomprehensible
> languages."[6]
>
> Becoming cyborg is a consciousness that is embedded
> within the notion
> of diasporas. To confront the interface between
> human and machine is
> to confront cyborg consciousness. The interface is
> the matriarch of
> cyborg culture, assuming, "a unified role: a means
> of communication
> and reproduction; carrier and weaver; machine
> assemblage in the
> service of the species; a general purpose system of
> simulation."[7]
> Technology displaces motherhood, with "her
> inexhaustible aptitude for
> mimicry" which makes her "the living foundation for
> the whole staging
> of the world". Being cyborg means that infancy
> without motherhood is
> possible. Before the displacement of motherhood by
> technology can
> be imagined, however, it is first necessary to
> explore the
> relationship between mother and child. Within the
> dual
> relationship transference between mother and child,
> according to
> Julia Kristeva, it is possible "to posit as
> "object" of analysis, not
> "childhood language", but rather an infantile
> language."[8] Before
> literate language begins to encode the identity of
> the infant, and
> prior to the moment where the mirror introduces the
> paradoxical
> representation of reality, the infant and the
> mother exist within a
> symbiotic relationship defined by two basic
> principles: the need to
> nurture and the nurture of need. The mother-child
> symbiosis provides
> the necessary relationship for infantile language
> to be communicated.
> The infant is incapable of distinguishing between
> "sameness" and
> "otherness", between "subject" and "object",
> between itself and the
> mother.[9] The infantile language means that
> infants are not
> capable of imagining themselves autonomous of the
> Mother. But what
> if this symbiotic relationship between mother and
> child were
> interrupted? What happens when technology begins to
> work itself into
> the infantile discourse, severing the symbiosis
> between mother and
> child? What happens when the infant, instead
> becomes incapable of
> distinguishing between itself and the machine?
> These are the
> questions posed by the biological mother of a
> cyborg. This is the
> genesis of a cyborg. It begins in pre-literacy,
> when the child
> engages in an infantile language with the machine,
> and not, the
> mother.
>
> According to Julia Kristeva, "love replaces
> narcissism in a third
> person that is external to the act of discursive
> communication."[10]
> Love between humans, thus, becomes invested in a
> third party. What
> happens then, in cyborg culture, when that "third
> party" is not a
> person at all, but a machine -- a ventilator, an
> incubator, a
> monitor. Technology separates the dialectic
> relationship between
> mother and child, mediating the relations between
> them. In the
> production of artificial means to life, is the
> machine capable of
> simulating love? Is the cyborg capable of love? Or
> is it merely
> consuming?
>
> March 30, 2003 -- Quinn has been fighting with
> her ventilator.
> She's tries to tug it out of her throat, but
> it's glued to her
> skin. To stop her from wrestling, the doctor
> drugged her with
> addictive sedatives and paralyzed her so she
> can't move, so the
> ventilator can fully take over her body. How
> can such violence
> give life? So, I read her a story by Dr. Seuss
> about really
> small people called Whos... At the sound of my
> voice, she
> opened her eyes for a minute. That's not
> supposed to happen. I
> was asked to leave. I was disrupting the
> machine.
>
> Living within a mediated body means that rituals of
> being are also
> written by technology. Technology is mimesis, the
> capability of
> imitating the human condition with such exactitude
> that it has become
> synonymous with the skin, the flesh, the vital
> organs of human
> bodies. Artificial life becomes the performance of
> real life.
> Distinguishing between skin from machine, thus
> becomes difficult.
>
> February 8, 2003 -- There is a scab on her
> chest where the
> nurse pulled the electrode off her skin, and
> with it, came most
> of the right nipple.
>
> What are the implications of this violent
> symbiosis? Becoming cyborg
> implicates the human condition with the eternal
> mediation of the
> human experience, the eternal return of the
> machine. The human
> condition becomes the media itself. The cyborg
> consciousness
> becomes, like the clear glass of the incubator, an
> invisible
> interface through which everything is mediated --
> the environment,
> the experience of living, the means to communicate,
> the way of
> "knowing." The relationship between mother and
> child itself is
> mediated by technology. Technology interrupts the
> relation,
> intercepts the exchange of nurturing and needing of
> the infantile
> language. The Mother becomes redundant: technology
> becomes the
> external womb.
>
> Within the discourse of cyber-feminism, the
> externalized,
> technological womb begins to make sense: "in Latin,
> it is matrix, or
> matter, both the mother and the material."[11]
> Technology has become
> both the mother and the matter of the
> consciousness, the medium
> through which the need to nurture and the nurture
> of need are
> fulfilled. The cyborg is thus born through this
> virtual non-space,
> this womb of machinic consciousness. Within the
> technological womb,
> human bodies and human consciousness becomes
> "cy-dough-plasma" --
> malleable matter, without fixed form.[12]
>
> February 27, 2003 -- ...I'm a little confused
> about her ears.
> They're pliable. Lacking cartilage at this
> stage of development
> often finds them in crumples of folded-over
> flesh. They require
> frequent re-positioning and remolding so they
> don't get all
> folded up like fortune cookies. I try not to
> play with them too
> much...but, it's not like you can rationalize
> with her yet...
> "don't crumple up your ears dear...".
>
> Externalizing the womb subjects the unformed body
> to manipulation.
> The consciousness, like the fetal body, becomes the
> art of the
> machine. Bodies and consciousness are remixed. What
> we perceive to
> be the body often becomes distorted in the
> engineering of cyborg.
>
> February 3, 2003 -- It was as if her delicate
> features had been
> rearranged to make room for equipment.
> Somehow, her perfect
> nose was in the way of the Ventilator, so they
> moved it off to
> the side. The machines rearrange the
> perfection of her body.
>
> Just as in Julia Kristeva's infantile language,
> there is no easy way
> to distinguish between the child and the simulated
> techno-Mother.
> The machine and the baby become symbiotic.
> "Sameness" governs the
> relationship between the baby and the machine.
> Their sameness means
> that they're mutually dependent on each other in
> order for life to
> continue.
>
> Technology is capable of simulating vital signs, of
> supporting life,
> of becoming Mother. The child of the techno-Mother
> is essentially, a
> virtual body. A simulation of vital signs that
> becomes internalized.
> The ventilator simulates Quinn's breathing,
> supporting her life
> through mimicry. Through the perfect simulation of
> breathing, the
> ritual of life goes forward. In cyborg culture, the
> lines between
> simulation and reality are blurred into
> irrelevancy. The cyborg is
> the interface between simulation and reality, where
> the simulacra
> becomes capable of living. Her body, "redesigned by
> means of
> life-support machines and prosthetic organs."[13]
>
> Thus, infancy has become disembodied from the
> biological Mother and
> goes forward unmanned, like the Predator Drone ?
> moving forward into
> a machinic realm of infinite possibility.[14] What
> happens when the
> conditions of infinite possibility are governed by
> an inherent
> nihilism? The externalization of the nervous system
> makes possible
> the continuation of life, yet it is a life that is
> fundamentally
> nihilistic, eternally bound to a mediated
> consciousness. The
> ventilator simulates Quinn's breathing, supporting
> her life through
> mimicry. Through the perfect simulation of
> breathing, the ritual of
> life goes forward. In cyborg culture, the lines
> between simulation
> and reality are blurred into irrelevancy. The
> cyborg becomes the
> interface between simulation and reality, where the
> simulacra becomes
> capable of living. The body is "redesigned by means
> of life-support
> machines and prosthetic organs."[15] The body is
> breached, becomes
> cyborg, a recombinant fusion of technological and
> biological traffic.
> What is internal and external to the virtually dead
> body becomes
> confused.
>
> March 1, 2003 -- I want to love and hate the
> machine that
> breathes for her. Ventilation is a Catch-22.
> Ventilation turns
> the fragile tissues and muscles that are used
> for breathing and
> exchanging oxygen into scars. "As long as her
> lungs develop
> faster than the ventilator damages them, we
> win," says Dr. T.
> She is getting chest X-rays almost daily now.
> In her X-rays,
> her lungs are clouded-over with white. Her
> little lungs fill
> with fluid that has to be suctioned out almost
> every two hours
> in order for her to get the proper amount of
> oxygen into her
> blood. We've had a serious heart to heart,
> recently. I used the
> "stern mother voice" for the first time to
> tell her that she is
> not allowed to take her ventilator to
> kindergarten with her.
>
> The relationship between machine and body cannot
> sustain life
> endlessly. One must eventually overtake the other
> in order for life
> to continue. Through the body, the machine performs
> the dichotomy of
> living and killing, life and death. It gives life
> only to overtake
> it. The technology that sustains life is ultimately
> nihilistic. What
> happens faster is vital -- the ability to outgrow
> the machine, or the
> damage inflicted by the machine itself. This is a
> profound statement
> about the morphology of humans and machines. To
> become cyborg is to
> commit a slow-suicide. Ultimately, it is the
> nihilation of the human
> body, of autonomous human consciousness. This is
> the paradox of
> modernity, manifest in rituals of living.
>
> Just as technology is capable of simulating rituals
> of living,
> becoming cyborg affects the rituals of dying.
> Technology has
> intervened and institutionalized the right/rite of
> death. Even after
> the body expires, the machines keep going. It is
> not until they are
> turned off that the body is pronounced "dead."
> Being cyborg means
> that death is experienced in a new way. Is it
> possible to be absent
> in death ? a redundant body in the machinic
> performance of
> consciousness?
>
> February 14 -- I hold my child for the first
> time. She is
> naked, against my chest. Her ventilator curls
> around my neck,
> taped to my shoulder, disappears inside her.
> There are other
> tubes, too, taped to my other limbs by peach
> colored surgical
> tape. Beside me, another mother's baby dies.
> Another baby dies.
> The respiratory technician yells : "NO CPR"
> from across the
> nursery. He crosses the room, switches off the
> machines ?
> ventilator, incubator, monitor, eight
> intravenous pumps of
> miscellaneous medical poisons. The life inside
> the machine,
> refuses to go on without them. And I am taped
> to a rubberized
> rocking chair, taped to my baby, taped to the
> machine. I cannot
> leave when another baby's mother comes in.
>
> The nihilism of becoming cyborg is inescapable. We
> are taped down to
> our own inherent nihilism. In cyborg culture,
> nihilism becomes
> synonymous with death. When a cyborg dies, the
> announcement of death
> waits for the machine to be switched off. The
> simulation of life
> continues even in the absence of physical being.
> When a cyborg dies,
> it is only because the human body has failed the
> perfect simulation
> of life by the machine. Death is ambivalent to
> physical being, the
> body becomes almost irrelevant. The machinic
> simulation of "being
> human" can continue to exist in the absence of a
> body, but the body
> cannot continue in the absence of the machine. In
> death, the human
> body seemingly fails the machine. This is what
> Jacques Derrida calls,
> the logocentric moment where one technology of
> knowing is privileged
> over the other and infinite other historicities of
> being are
> forgotten. What happens if someone fails to turn
> off the machine? Is
> it possible that the cyborg can forget to die? Can
> machinic
> consciousness simply be switched off? It is the
> moment where we
> forget to be merely human, that the machine takes
> over the mother,
> the technology takes over the consciousness. Thus,
> becoming cyborg
> becomes a meta-narrative, totalizing and
> privileging only one point
> of view -- the technological gaze. The
> internalization of the
> technological gaze it the most important political
> moment in becoming
> cyborg.
>
> The internalization of the machine is the moment
> when the human
> condition becomes invisibly mediated by technology.
> It is the moment
> where technology and knowing become bound within
> perception. Thus,
> becoming cyborg is not merely a physical condition.
> It is a
> condition of being mediated by technology.
>
> February 26, 2003 -- ... I look to the
> machines and they tell
> me how my daughter is doing today. How easy it
> is to look at
> the monitor that tells me, "she has the
> hiccups, she's
> sleeping, she's not breathing- not yet". The
> machines talk to
> me and I understand what Quinn cannot yet tell
> me. The machines
> tell me what she cannot communicate. Quinn is
> having a
> "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day"...
> [16]
>
> The incorporation of the machinic interface into
> the language of
> perception witnesses the internalization of what
> Michel Foucault
> calls, panopticism.[17] Panopticism goes beyond
> physical
> architecture. Being cyborg reifies the repressive
> technologies of the
> panoptical illusion. To reify the panopticon, thus,
> inherently
> denies the possibility that there are ways of
> being, beyond the
> cyborg experience. I saw the displacement of my own
> motherhood by
> the machine. I could understand my daughter in and
> through the
> machinic interface. In this moment, I too, was
> written into the
> meta-narrative of the cyborg consciousness, my
> perception of the
> human condition filtered through the technological
> gaze.
>
> Exposing the womb, digesting machinic
> consciousness, monitoring the
> human body, locating motherhood outside of the
> mother/child
> symbiosis. These are technologies of becoming
> cyborg that go beyond
> the physical imagery. These are technologies of
> surveillance that
> are internalized, that operate in and through the
> cyborg. Ultimately
> means that when the machine is shut off, cyborg
> life continues to
> occupy the human condition through consciousness,
> subconsciousness,
> perception.
>
> April 10 -- After 69 days on a ventilator, the
> tube was finally
> pulled. My little Quinnapottamus now breathes
> her own breaths.
> I guess our little talk about "no ventilators
> in kindergarten"
> made sense to her and she has decided to hold
> her own. It was
> amazing to watch her take her first breaths
> after they pulled
> the tube, to hear the resigned sigh of the
> ventilator when it
> was shut off. The lines on the monitor,
> flat-lining. The sound
> of her crying, her voice rising through
> bruised vocal chords
> for the first time, met my ears and was
> strangely comforting.
>
> The cyborg does not die because it is unplugged.
> The cyborg
> continues to exist beyond all locations of space
> and time, the
> consciousness irreversibly fused with technology.
> Becoming cyborg
> necessitates the sublimation of the mind. Becoming
> cyborg,
> internalizing the panopticon allows for cultivation
> of human life in
> and for state sovereignty. To become cyborg is to
> be harvested by
> the state and for the state. Like my daughter,
> paralyzed for
> wrestling with her machines, internalizing the
> panopticon is
> paralyzing. Internalizing the panopticon makes it
> impossible for the
> body to perform outside of technology. Ultimately,
> cyborg culture is
> written within the context of state sovereignty.
> The body performs
> sovereignty. The making of cyborg bodies is simply
> that ? the
> epistemic branding of the state on the bodies and
> the minds of the
> subordinate citizenry. The making of cyborg bodies
> is simply
> panopticism, the ingestion of the statist
> technology. It is about
> exposure, about making visible each privacy of the
> human body for the
> purposes of controlling individual life. It is
> about technology
> becoming invisible,
> "seeing-without-being-seen."[18] The
> architecture of Foucault's panopticon, like the
> genesis of one
> cyborg, is both a physical and an epistemic
> incorporation of a
> centralizing, homogenizing structure of being that
> becomes the
> subject of scrutiny, both collectively and
> individually, by an
> observer in the "tower" who remains unseen. The
> panoptical cyborg is
> both the subject and object of scrutiny, both the
> "tower" of
> observation and the observed subject. The
> internalization of the
> panopticon is self-scrutiny. Ultimately, the cyborg
> becomes the
> technological furniture upon which state
> sovereignty lounges.
>
> Panoticism becomes manifest in the minds of the
> everyday
> cyborg-citizen. Suddenly, a story about a neonate
> baby is less about
> medicine and miracles and more about what remains
> hidden and
> unarticulated ? the repressive technology of being
> bound to cyborg
> consciousness. Discovering the panopticon within
> exposes a thinly
> disguised operation of sovereigntist power. Cyborgs
> do not write
> themselves, technology does. The fusion of machine
> and body is the
> manifestation of the panopticon, the eternal
> reification of a bounded
> human identity.[19] The hospital serves as an
> architecture for
> enacting these power relations, creating enormous
> houses of
> confinement. This same technology operates in and
> through
> institutions of education, religion, politics. The
> ultimate
> confinement of the human condition is simply this:
> the
> internalization of the panoptical technology means
> that humanity can
> never imagine being autonomous. The cyborg becomes
> a venue for
> confinement. Thus, the panopticon of cyborg culture
> confines the
> human condition within a symbiosis of machine and
> body. Symbiosis
> with machine (whether machinic consciousness or
> machinic matter)
> becomes the precondition to living itself. To
> locate "being"
> outside of technology becomes an impossibility.
> Ultimately, it
> reduces the human body to a specific mechanics, a
> site of
> micro-physics, a docile and useful being. Becoming
> cyborg is
> ultimately about the sublimation of the human
> identity and the
> political imaginary.
>
> This critical examination of cyborg culture is by
> no means aimed to
> discredit the technologies that taught my daughter
> the art of living.
> It does, however, highlight the implications of
> becoming cyborg.
> In a sense, all of humanity has become disembodied
> from the womb.
> The genesis of a cyborg goes well beyond the
> physical union of
> machine with body. The day I gave birth to a
> cyborg, I began to
> understand how every human has become a
> collaboration of machinic and
> biological matter. The human condition is mediated
> by technology.
> The meta-narrative of being cyborg ignores ethical
> questions. The
> machine can't ask: What would the world look like
> without mothers?
> Or, for that matter, fathers? Technology is, quire
> literally,
> beginning to rewire the way we do family, the way
> we know humanity.
> The ultimate violence of technology is its ability
> to generate its
> own invisibility, to circulate undetected in and
> through the physical
> body, to become manifest in the human consciousness
> as epistemic
> reality. Conditions of possibility other than
> becoming cyborg are
> thus, hidden from the human condition. Once
> technology has been
> internalized and operates upon us through invisible
> epistemes, it
> becomes the only way of being human. Engaging in a
> binary
> relationship with technology is merely one means of
> engaging with new
> conditions of possibility for the human condition.
> However,
> human/machine symbiosis simultaneously negates the
> possibility for
> narrative of "being in the world" and
> simultaneously forgets all of
> the moments of differentiation and deferral that
> work to inform the
> human essence.[20] Ways of being "other" than an
> agent of
> sovereignty become impossible when identity is
> bound to logocentric
> privileging of dominant discourse.[21]
>
>
>
> Notes:
> ------
>
> [1] Kristeva, Julia. _Desire in Language_. Columbia
> University
> Press: New York: 1980.
>
> [2] Kristeva: 160.
>
> [3] Kennedy, Barbara. "The 'Virtual Machine' and
> New Becomings in the
> Pre-Millenial Culture" in Bell, D. and Kennedy, B.,
> eds. _The
> Cybercultures Reader_. Routledge: London and New
> York, 2000.
>
> [4] Bell, David. "Cybercultures Reader: A User's
> Guide" in Bell, D.
> and Kennedy, B., eds. _The Cybercultures Reader_.
> Routledge: London
> and New York, 2000.
>
> [5] Bell 7.
>
> [6] Anon.
>
> [7] Plant, Sadie. "On the Matrix: Cyberfeminist
> Simulations" in Bell,
> D. and Kennedy, B., eds. _The Cybercultures
> Reader_. Routledge:
> London and New York, 2000.
>
> [8] Kristeva 278.
>
> [9] Kristeva 284.
>
> [10] Kristeva 279.
>
> [11] Plant 333.
>
> [12] Bell 8.
>
> [13] Bell 11.
>
> [14] Crandall, J. "Unmanned: Embedded Reporters,
> Predator Drones and
> Armed Perception": www.ctheory.net/E124.
>
> [15] Bell 11.
>
> [16] Viorst, Judith. "Alexander and the Terrible,
> Horrible, No Good,
> Very Bad Day". Aladdin Paperbacks, New York: 1972.
>
> [17] Foucault, Michel. _Discipline and Punish: The
> Birth of the
> Prison_. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage,
> 1977.
>
> [18] Foucault 24.
>
> [19] Magnusson, W., "The Reification of Political
> Community" in
> Walker R.B.J. and Mendlovitz. S.H., _Contending
> Sovereignties_.
> Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder: 1990.
>
> [20] Ashley, Richard K., "Living on Border Lines:
> Man,
> Poststructuralism, and War". Nichols Pub. Co.,
> London and New York:
> 1980.
>
> [21] Ashley 261.
>
>
> --------------------
>
> Jaimie Smith-Windsor studies political science at
> the University of
> Victoria in Canada. Her academic studies are
> moderated by a passion
> for sailing, and an appreciation for the visual and
> written arts.
> Becoming a first-time mother to a special needs
> child provides her
> with a unique perspective on the relationship
> between contemporary
> technology and the maternal instinct that comes
> with motherhood.
>
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
>
> *
> * CTHEORY is an international journal of theory,
> technology and
> * culture. Articles, interviews, and key book
> reviews in
> * contemporary discourse are published weekly as
> well as
> * theorisations of major "event-scenes" in the
> mediascape.
> *
> * Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
> *
> * Editorial Board: Jean Baudrillard (Paris), Paul
> Virilio (Paris),
> * Bruce Sterling (Austin), R.U. Sirius (San
> Francisco), Siegfried
> * Zielinski (Koeln), Stelarc (Melbourne), Richard
> Kadrey (San
> * Francisco), DJ Spooky [Paul D. Miller] (NYC),
> Timothy Murray
> * (Ithaca/Cornell), Lynn Hershman Leeson (San
> Francisco), Stephen
> * Pfohl (Boston), Andrew Ross (NYC), David Cook
> (Toronto), Ralph
> * Melcher (Sante Fe), Shannon Bell (Toronto), Gad
> Horowitz
> * (Toronto), Andrew Wernick (Peterborough).
> *
> * In Memory: Kathy Acker
> *
> * Editorial Correspondents: Ken Hollings (UK),
> * Maurice Charland (Canada) Steve Gibson
> (Canada/Sweden).
> *
> * Editorial Assistant: Ted Hiebert
> * WWW Design & Technical Advisor: Spencer Saunders
> (CTHEORY.NET)
> * WWW Engineer Emeritus: Carl Steadman
>
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
>
> To view CTHEORY online please visit:
> http://www.ctheory.net/
>
> To view CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA online please
> visit:
>
> http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/
>
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
>
> * CTHEORY includes:
> *
> * 1. Electronic reviews of key books in
> contemporary theory.
> *
> * 2. Electronic articles on theory, technology and
> culture.
> *
> * 3. Event-scenes in politics, culture and the
> mediascape.
> *
> * 4. Interviews with significant theorists,
> artists, and writers.
> *
> * 5. Multimedia theme issues and projects.
> *
> *
> * The Editors would like the thank the University
> of Victoria for
> * financial and intellectual support of CTheory.
> In particular, the
> * Editors would like to thank the Dean of Social
> Sciences, Dr. John
> * Schofield, the Dean of Engineering, Dr. D.
> Michael Miller and Dr.
> * Jon Muzio, Department of Computer Science.
> *
> * No use of CTHEORY articles without permission.
> Works from the
> * CTHEORY archive may only be reprinted with
> permission of the
> * Editors. Email ctheory@uvic.ca for more
> information.
> *
> * Mailing address: CTHEORY, University of Victoria,
> PO Box 3050,
> * Victoria, BC, Canada, V8W 3P5.
> *
> * Full text and microform versions are available
> from UMI, Ann Arbor,
> * Michigan; and Canadian Periodical Index/Gale
> Canada, Toronto.
> *
> * Indexed in: International Political Science
> Abstracts/
> * Documentation politique international;
> Sociological Abstract
> * Inc.; Advance Bibliography of Contents:
> Political Science and
> * Government; Canadian Periodical Index; Film and
> Literature Index.
> *
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ctheory mailing list
> ctheory@lists.uvic.ca
> http://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ctheory
=====
<http://www.naxsmash.net>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
------ End of Forwarded Message
From: Christina McPhee <christinamcphee@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 16:24:23 -0800 (PST)
To: christina112@earthlink.net
Subject: Fwd: [CTHEORY] Article 137 - The Cyborg Mother: A Breached Boundary
--- ctheory@lists.uvic.ca wrote:
> Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 12:57:37 -0800
> To: ctheory@lists.uvic.ca
> From: ctheory@lists.uvic.ca
> Subject: [CTHEORY] Article 137 - The Cyborg Mother:
> A Breached Boundary
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
> CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE
> VOL 27, NOS 1-2
> *** Visit CTHEORY Online:
> http://www.ctheory.net ***
>
> Article 137 04/02/04 Editors: Arthur and
> Marilouise Kroker
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
>
>
>
> The Cyborg Mother: A Breached Boundary
>
>
==========================================================
>
>
> ~Jaimie Smith-Windsor~
>
>
>
> Why not tell a story in a new way? Why not think in
> unfinished ways?
> Without fixity? Without finality? Ask questions
> without answers.
> Without presuppositions and causes and effects and
> linear time. Why
> not. Why not "whisk yourself away from your
> comfortable
> position?"[1] When we live in a world of fractured
> identities and
> broken boundaries, why not rebel against yourself,
> or the
> technologies of "yourself" and discover new ways of
> being? Reconcile
> that everything is being shattered. Identity is
> being shattered and
> technology is picking up the pieces, and there
> stands before us an
> infinitude of recombinant possibility. Rewriting
> history becomes
> possible:
>
> The time of history passes through the stories
> of individuals:
> their birth, their experience...[2]
>
>
> The birth of my daughter:
> -------------------------
>
> Aleah Quinn Smith-Windsor
>
> born: January 31st, 2003
>
>
> A few days after Quinn was born, this quote
> appeared, written beside
> her incubator:
>
> Every blade of grass has an angel that bends
> over it and
> whispers, grow, grow. Anon.
>
> It was a near-fatal birth. Quinn was born at
> twenty-four and a half
> weeks gestation, three and a half months before her
> due date. Her
> birth weight was 700 grams, about one pound and a
> half.
>
> February 1, 2003 -- It is difficult to imagine
> such a tiny,
> perfect human being. Her feet are no larger
> than two
> fingernails. Her legs are about the same size
> as adult fingers,
> femurs measuring 4.5 centimeters. Her eyebrows
> curve like
> fallen eyelashes above her eyes, waiting to be
> wished upon.
>
>
> Morphology after the birth of my daughter:
> ------------------------------------------
>
> Immediately after Quinn's lungs were cleared she
> was incubated,
> stabilized and flown, with the Neonate Team, by way
> of helicopter
> ambulance, to the Special Care Nursery at the
> British Columbia
> Children's Hospital in Vancouver. We got to see her
> for a minute,
> tangled beneath the cords of her life support
> machines.
>
> February 2, 2003 -- A pump pushes breast milk
> down her throat,
> through a tube that goes into her belly.
> Sixty-five breaths per
> minute are administered by a Drager 2000
> Ventilator. She
> receives extra nutrition through an artificial
> umbilical line,
> blood-products and medications through an
> Intra Venous.
> Electrodes cover her body, measure her breaths
> and heart beats,
> her temperature, oxygen saturation and blood
> pressure.
>
>
> Motherhood -- a Breached Boundary:
> ----------------------------------
>
> My daughter's birth was a post-human, cyborg
> moment. She became
> cyborg, "the illegitimate child of the
> twentieth-century
> technological dynamo -- part human, part machine,
> never completely
> either."[3] Using this moment to grapple with the
> concept and
> implications of cyborg culture reveals some
> important questions about
> the amalgamation between the technological and the
> biological, and
> "not just in the banal meat-meets-metal sense."[4]
> Breaching the
> bio-techno boundary forces an engagement with "new
> and complex
> understandings of 'life', consciousness, and the
> distinction (or lack
> of distinction) between the biological and the
> technological."[5]
> Becoming cyborg is about the simultaneous
> externalization of the
> nervous system and internalization of the machine.
> Thus symbiosis of
> human and machine makes possible the genesis of the
> cyborg
> consciousness. Ultimately, the breached boundary of
> the human body
> is a diasporatic phenomenon: the dispersion of an
> originally
> homogeneous entity (the body), "the diasporas of
> the human condition
> into several mutually incomprehensible
> languages."[6]
>
> Becoming cyborg is a consciousness that is embedded
> within the notion
> of diasporas. To confront the interface between
> human and machine is
> to confront cyborg consciousness. The interface is
> the matriarch of
> cyborg culture, assuming, "a unified role: a means
> of communication
> and reproduction; carrier and weaver; machine
> assemblage in the
> service of the species; a general purpose system of
> simulation."[7]
> Technology displaces motherhood, with "her
> inexhaustible aptitude for
> mimicry" which makes her "the living foundation for
> the whole staging
> of the world". Being cyborg means that infancy
> without motherhood is
> possible. Before the displacement of motherhood by
> technology can
> be imagined, however, it is first necessary to
> explore the
> relationship between mother and child. Within the
> dual
> relationship transference between mother and child,
> according to
> Julia Kristeva, it is possible "to posit as
> "object" of analysis, not
> "childhood language", but rather an infantile
> language."[8] Before
> literate language begins to encode the identity of
> the infant, and
> prior to the moment where the mirror introduces the
> paradoxical
> representation of reality, the infant and the
> mother exist within a
> symbiotic relationship defined by two basic
> principles: the need to
> nurture and the nurture of need. The mother-child
> symbiosis provides
> the necessary relationship for infantile language
> to be communicated.
> The infant is incapable of distinguishing between
> "sameness" and
> "otherness", between "subject" and "object",
> between itself and the
> mother.[9] The infantile language means that
> infants are not
> capable of imagining themselves autonomous of the
> Mother. But what
> if this symbiotic relationship between mother and
> child were
> interrupted? What happens when technology begins to
> work itself into
> the infantile discourse, severing the symbiosis
> between mother and
> child? What happens when the infant, instead
> becomes incapable of
> distinguishing between itself and the machine?
> These are the
> questions posed by the biological mother of a
> cyborg. This is the
> genesis of a cyborg. It begins in pre-literacy,
> when the child
> engages in an infantile language with the machine,
> and not, the
> mother.
>
> According to Julia Kristeva, "love replaces
> narcissism in a third
> person that is external to the act of discursive
> communication."[10]
> Love between humans, thus, becomes invested in a
> third party. What
> happens then, in cyborg culture, when that "third
> party" is not a
> person at all, but a machine -- a ventilator, an
> incubator, a
> monitor. Technology separates the dialectic
> relationship between
> mother and child, mediating the relations between
> them. In the
> production of artificial means to life, is the
> machine capable of
> simulating love? Is the cyborg capable of love? Or
> is it merely
> consuming?
>
> March 30, 2003 -- Quinn has been fighting with
> her ventilator.
> She's tries to tug it out of her throat, but
> it's glued to her
> skin. To stop her from wrestling, the doctor
> drugged her with
> addictive sedatives and paralyzed her so she
> can't move, so the
> ventilator can fully take over her body. How
> can such violence
> give life? So, I read her a story by Dr. Seuss
> about really
> small people called Whos... At the sound of my
> voice, she
> opened her eyes for a minute. That's not
> supposed to happen. I
> was asked to leave. I was disrupting the
> machine.
>
> Living within a mediated body means that rituals of
> being are also
> written by technology. Technology is mimesis, the
> capability of
> imitating the human condition with such exactitude
> that it has become
> synonymous with the skin, the flesh, the vital
> organs of human
> bodies. Artificial life becomes the performance of
> real life.
> Distinguishing between skin from machine, thus
> becomes difficult.
>
> February 8, 2003 -- There is a scab on her
> chest where the
> nurse pulled the electrode off her skin, and
> with it, came most
> of the right nipple.
>
> What are the implications of this violent
> symbiosis? Becoming cyborg
> implicates the human condition with the eternal
> mediation of the
> human experience, the eternal return of the
> machine. The human
> condition becomes the media itself. The cyborg
> consciousness
> becomes, like the clear glass of the incubator, an
> invisible
> interface through which everything is mediated --
> the environment,
> the experience of living, the means to communicate,
> the way of
> "knowing." The relationship between mother and
> child itself is
> mediated by technology. Technology interrupts the
> relation,
> intercepts the exchange of nurturing and needing of
> the infantile
> language. The Mother becomes redundant: technology
> becomes the
> external womb.
>
> Within the discourse of cyber-feminism, the
> externalized,
> technological womb begins to make sense: "in Latin,
> it is matrix, or
> matter, both the mother and the material."[11]
> Technology has become
> both the mother and the matter of the
> consciousness, the medium
> through which the need to nurture and the nurture
> of need are
> fulfilled. The cyborg is thus born through this
> virtual non-space,
> this womb of machinic consciousness. Within the
> technological womb,
> human bodies and human consciousness becomes
> "cy-dough-plasma" --
> malleable matter, without fixed form.[12]
>
> February 27, 2003 -- ...I'm a little confused
> about her ears.
> They're pliable. Lacking cartilage at this
> stage of development
> often finds them in crumples of folded-over
> flesh. They require
> frequent re-positioning and remolding so they
> don't get all
> folded up like fortune cookies. I try not to
> play with them too
> much...but, it's not like you can rationalize
> with her yet...
> "don't crumple up your ears dear...".
>
> Externalizing the womb subjects the unformed body
> to manipulation.
> The consciousness, like the fetal body, becomes the
> art of the
> machine. Bodies and consciousness are remixed. What
> we perceive to
> be the body often becomes distorted in the
> engineering of cyborg.
>
> February 3, 2003 -- It was as if her delicate
> features had been
> rearranged to make room for equipment.
> Somehow, her perfect
> nose was in the way of the Ventilator, so they
> moved it off to
> the side. The machines rearrange the
> perfection of her body.
>
> Just as in Julia Kristeva's infantile language,
> there is no easy way
> to distinguish between the child and the simulated
> techno-Mother.
> The machine and the baby become symbiotic.
> "Sameness" governs the
> relationship between the baby and the machine.
> Their sameness means
> that they're mutually dependent on each other in
> order for life to
> continue.
>
> Technology is capable of simulating vital signs, of
> supporting life,
> of becoming Mother. The child of the techno-Mother
> is essentially, a
> virtual body. A simulation of vital signs that
> becomes internalized.
> The ventilator simulates Quinn's breathing,
> supporting her life
> through mimicry. Through the perfect simulation of
> breathing, the
> ritual of life goes forward. In cyborg culture, the
> lines between
> simulation and reality are blurred into
> irrelevancy. The cyborg is
> the interface between simulation and reality, where
> the simulacra
> becomes capable of living. Her body, "redesigned by
> means of
> life-support machines and prosthetic organs."[13]
>
> Thus, infancy has become disembodied from the
> biological Mother and
> goes forward unmanned, like the Predator Drone ?
> moving forward into
> a machinic realm of infinite possibility.[14] What
> happens when the
> conditions of infinite possibility are governed by
> an inherent
> nihilism? The externalization of the nervous system
> makes possible
> the continuation of life, yet it is a life that is
> fundamentally
> nihilistic, eternally bound to a mediated
> consciousness. The
> ventilator simulates Quinn's breathing, supporting
> her life through
> mimicry. Through the perfect simulation of
> breathing, the ritual of
> life goes forward. In cyborg culture, the lines
> between simulation
> and reality are blurred into irrelevancy. The
> cyborg becomes the
> interface between simulation and reality, where the
> simulacra becomes
> capable of living. The body is "redesigned by means
> of life-support
> machines and prosthetic organs."[15] The body is
> breached, becomes
> cyborg, a recombinant fusion of technological and
> biological traffic.
> What is internal and external to the virtually dead
> body becomes
> confused.
>
> March 1, 2003 -- I want to love and hate the
> machine that
> breathes for her. Ventilation is a Catch-22.
> Ventilation turns
> the fragile tissues and muscles that are used
> for breathing and
> exchanging oxygen into scars. "As long as her
> lungs develop
> faster than the ventilator damages them, we
> win," says Dr. T.
> She is getting chest X-rays almost daily now.
> In her X-rays,
> her lungs are clouded-over with white. Her
> little lungs fill
> with fluid that has to be suctioned out almost
> every two hours
> in order for her to get the proper amount of
> oxygen into her
> blood. We've had a serious heart to heart,
> recently. I used the
> "stern mother voice" for the first time to
> tell her that she is
> not allowed to take her ventilator to
> kindergarten with her.
>
> The relationship between machine and body cannot
> sustain life
> endlessly. One must eventually overtake the other
> in order for life
> to continue. Through the body, the machine performs
> the dichotomy of
> living and killing, life and death. It gives life
> only to overtake
> it. The technology that sustains life is ultimately
> nihilistic. What
> happens faster is vital -- the ability to outgrow
> the machine, or the
> damage inflicted by the machine itself. This is a
> profound statement
> about the morphology of humans and machines. To
> become cyborg is to
> commit a slow-suicide. Ultimately, it is the
> nihilation of the human
> body, of autonomous human consciousness. This is
> the paradox of
> modernity, manifest in rituals of living.
>
> Just as technology is capable of simulating rituals
> of living,
> becoming cyborg affects the rituals of dying.
> Technology has
> intervened and institutionalized the right/rite of
> death. Even after
> the body expires, the machines keep going. It is
> not until they are
> turned off that the body is pronounced "dead."
> Being cyborg means
> that death is experienced in a new way. Is it
> possible to be absent
> in death ? a redundant body in the machinic
> performance of
> consciousness?
>
> February 14 -- I hold my child for the first
> time. She is
> naked, against my chest. Her ventilator curls
> around my neck,
> taped to my shoulder, disappears inside her.
> There are other
> tubes, too, taped to my other limbs by peach
> colored surgical
> tape. Beside me, another mother's baby dies.
> Another baby dies.
> The respiratory technician yells : "NO CPR"
> from across the
> nursery. He crosses the room, switches off the
> machines ?
> ventilator, incubator, monitor, eight
> intravenous pumps of
> miscellaneous medical poisons. The life inside
> the machine,
> refuses to go on without them. And I am taped
> to a rubberized
> rocking chair, taped to my baby, taped to the
> machine. I cannot
> leave when another baby's mother comes in.
>
> The nihilism of becoming cyborg is inescapable. We
> are taped down to
> our own inherent nihilism. In cyborg culture,
> nihilism becomes
> synonymous with death. When a cyborg dies, the
> announcement of death
> waits for the machine to be switched off. The
> simulation of life
> continues even in the absence of physical being.
> When a cyborg dies,
> it is only because the human body has failed the
> perfect simulation
> of life by the machine. Death is ambivalent to
> physical being, the
> body becomes almost irrelevant. The machinic
> simulation of "being
> human" can continue to exist in the absence of a
> body, but the body
> cannot continue in the absence of the machine. In
> death, the human
> body seemingly fails the machine. This is what
> Jacques Derrida calls,
> the logocentric moment where one technology of
> knowing is privileged
> over the other and infinite other historicities of
> being are
> forgotten. What happens if someone fails to turn
> off the machine? Is
> it possible that the cyborg can forget to die? Can
> machinic
> consciousness simply be switched off? It is the
> moment where we
> forget to be merely human, that the machine takes
> over the mother,
> the technology takes over the consciousness. Thus,
> becoming cyborg
> becomes a meta-narrative, totalizing and
> privileging only one point
> of view -- the technological gaze. The
> internalization of the
> technological gaze it the most important political
> moment in becoming
> cyborg.
>
> The internalization of the machine is the moment
> when the human
> condition becomes invisibly mediated by technology.
> It is the moment
> where technology and knowing become bound within
> perception. Thus,
> becoming cyborg is not merely a physical condition.
> It is a
> condition of being mediated by technology.
>
> February 26, 2003 -- ... I look to the
> machines and they tell
> me how my daughter is doing today. How easy it
> is to look at
> the monitor that tells me, "she has the
> hiccups, she's
> sleeping, she's not breathing- not yet". The
> machines talk to
> me and I understand what Quinn cannot yet tell
> me. The machines
> tell me what she cannot communicate. Quinn is
> having a
> "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day"...
> [16]
>
> The incorporation of the machinic interface into
> the language of
> perception witnesses the internalization of what
> Michel Foucault
> calls, panopticism.[17] Panopticism goes beyond
> physical
> architecture. Being cyborg reifies the repressive
> technologies of the
> panoptical illusion. To reify the panopticon, thus,
> inherently
> denies the possibility that there are ways of
> being, beyond the
> cyborg experience. I saw the displacement of my own
> motherhood by
> the machine. I could understand my daughter in and
> through the
> machinic interface. In this moment, I too, was
> written into the
> meta-narrative of the cyborg consciousness, my
> perception of the
> human condition filtered through the technological
> gaze.
>
> Exposing the womb, digesting machinic
> consciousness, monitoring the
> human body, locating motherhood outside of the
> mother/child
> symbiosis. These are technologies of becoming
> cyborg that go beyond
> the physical imagery. These are technologies of
> surveillance that
> are internalized, that operate in and through the
> cyborg. Ultimately
> means that when the machine is shut off, cyborg
> life continues to
> occupy the human condition through consciousness,
> subconsciousness,
> perception.
>
> April 10 -- After 69 days on a ventilator, the
> tube was finally
> pulled. My little Quinnapottamus now breathes
> her own breaths.
> I guess our little talk about "no ventilators
> in kindergarten"
> made sense to her and she has decided to hold
> her own. It was
> amazing to watch her take her first breaths
> after they pulled
> the tube, to hear the resigned sigh of the
> ventilator when it
> was shut off. The lines on the monitor,
> flat-lining. The sound
> of her crying, her voice rising through
> bruised vocal chords
> for the first time, met my ears and was
> strangely comforting.
>
> The cyborg does not die because it is unplugged.
> The cyborg
> continues to exist beyond all locations of space
> and time, the
> consciousness irreversibly fused with technology.
> Becoming cyborg
> necessitates the sublimation of the mind. Becoming
> cyborg,
> internalizing the panopticon allows for cultivation
> of human life in
> and for state sovereignty. To become cyborg is to
> be harvested by
> the state and for the state. Like my daughter,
> paralyzed for
> wrestling with her machines, internalizing the
> panopticon is
> paralyzing. Internalizing the panopticon makes it
> impossible for the
> body to perform outside of technology. Ultimately,
> cyborg culture is
> written within the context of state sovereignty.
> The body performs
> sovereignty. The making of cyborg bodies is simply
> that ? the
> epistemic branding of the state on the bodies and
> the minds of the
> subordinate citizenry. The making of cyborg bodies
> is simply
> panopticism, the ingestion of the statist
> technology. It is about
> exposure, about making visible each privacy of the
> human body for the
> purposes of controlling individual life. It is
> about technology
> becoming invisible,
> "seeing-without-being-seen."[18] The
> architecture of Foucault's panopticon, like the
> genesis of one
> cyborg, is both a physical and an epistemic
> incorporation of a
> centralizing, homogenizing structure of being that
> becomes the
> subject of scrutiny, both collectively and
> individually, by an
> observer in the "tower" who remains unseen. The
> panoptical cyborg is
> both the subject and object of scrutiny, both the
> "tower" of
> observation and the observed subject. The
> internalization of the
> panopticon is self-scrutiny. Ultimately, the cyborg
> becomes the
> technological furniture upon which state
> sovereignty lounges.
>
> Panoticism becomes manifest in the minds of the
> everyday
> cyborg-citizen. Suddenly, a story about a neonate
> baby is less about
> medicine and miracles and more about what remains
> hidden and
> unarticulated ? the repressive technology of being
> bound to cyborg
> consciousness. Discovering the panopticon within
> exposes a thinly
> disguised operation of sovereigntist power. Cyborgs
> do not write
> themselves, technology does. The fusion of machine
> and body is the
> manifestation of the panopticon, the eternal
> reification of a bounded
> human identity.[19] The hospital serves as an
> architecture for
> enacting these power relations, creating enormous
> houses of
> confinement. This same technology operates in and
> through
> institutions of education, religion, politics. The
> ultimate
> confinement of the human condition is simply this:
> the
> internalization of the panoptical technology means
> that humanity can
> never imagine being autonomous. The cyborg becomes
> a venue for
> confinement. Thus, the panopticon of cyborg culture
> confines the
> human condition within a symbiosis of machine and
> body. Symbiosis
> with machine (whether machinic consciousness or
> machinic matter)
> becomes the precondition to living itself. To
> locate "being"
> outside of technology becomes an impossibility.
> Ultimately, it
> reduces the human body to a specific mechanics, a
> site of
> micro-physics, a docile and useful being. Becoming
> cyborg is
> ultimately about the sublimation of the human
> identity and the
> political imaginary.
>
> This critical examination of cyborg culture is by
> no means aimed to
> discredit the technologies that taught my daughter
> the art of living.
> It does, however, highlight the implications of
> becoming cyborg.
> In a sense, all of humanity has become disembodied
> from the womb.
> The genesis of a cyborg goes well beyond the
> physical union of
> machine with body. The day I gave birth to a
> cyborg, I began to
> understand how every human has become a
> collaboration of machinic and
> biological matter. The human condition is mediated
> by technology.
> The meta-narrative of being cyborg ignores ethical
> questions. The
> machine can't ask: What would the world look like
> without mothers?
> Or, for that matter, fathers? Technology is, quire
> literally,
> beginning to rewire the way we do family, the way
> we know humanity.
> The ultimate violence of technology is its ability
> to generate its
> own invisibility, to circulate undetected in and
> through the physical
> body, to become manifest in the human consciousness
> as epistemic
> reality. Conditions of possibility other than
> becoming cyborg are
> thus, hidden from the human condition. Once
> technology has been
> internalized and operates upon us through invisible
> epistemes, it
> becomes the only way of being human. Engaging in a
> binary
> relationship with technology is merely one means of
> engaging with new
> conditions of possibility for the human condition.
> However,
> human/machine symbiosis simultaneously negates the
> possibility for
> narrative of "being in the world" and
> simultaneously forgets all of
> the moments of differentiation and deferral that
> work to inform the
> human essence.[20] Ways of being "other" than an
> agent of
> sovereignty become impossible when identity is
> bound to logocentric
> privileging of dominant discourse.[21]
>
>
>
> Notes:
> ------
>
> [1] Kristeva, Julia. _Desire in Language_. Columbia
> University
> Press: New York: 1980.
>
> [2] Kristeva: 160.
>
> [3] Kennedy, Barbara. "The 'Virtual Machine' and
> New Becomings in the
> Pre-Millenial Culture" in Bell, D. and Kennedy, B.,
> eds. _The
> Cybercultures Reader_. Routledge: London and New
> York, 2000.
>
> [4] Bell, David. "Cybercultures Reader: A User's
> Guide" in Bell, D.
> and Kennedy, B., eds. _The Cybercultures Reader_.
> Routledge: London
> and New York, 2000.
>
> [5] Bell 7.
>
> [6] Anon.
>
> [7] Plant, Sadie. "On the Matrix: Cyberfeminist
> Simulations" in Bell,
> D. and Kennedy, B., eds. _The Cybercultures
> Reader_. Routledge:
> London and New York, 2000.
>
> [8] Kristeva 278.
>
> [9] Kristeva 284.
>
> [10] Kristeva 279.
>
> [11] Plant 333.
>
> [12] Bell 8.
>
> [13] Bell 11.
>
> [14] Crandall, J. "Unmanned: Embedded Reporters,
> Predator Drones and
> Armed Perception": www.ctheory.net/E124.
>
> [15] Bell 11.
>
> [16] Viorst, Judith. "Alexander and the Terrible,
> Horrible, No Good,
> Very Bad Day". Aladdin Paperbacks, New York: 1972.
>
> [17] Foucault, Michel. _Discipline and Punish: The
> Birth of the
> Prison_. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage,
> 1977.
>
> [18] Foucault 24.
>
> [19] Magnusson, W., "The Reification of Political
> Community" in
> Walker R.B.J. and Mendlovitz. S.H., _Contending
> Sovereignties_.
> Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder: 1990.
>
> [20] Ashley, Richard K., "Living on Border Lines:
> Man,
> Poststructuralism, and War". Nichols Pub. Co.,
> London and New York:
> 1980.
>
> [21] Ashley 261.
>
>
> --------------------
>
> Jaimie Smith-Windsor studies political science at
> the University of
> Victoria in Canada. Her academic studies are
> moderated by a passion
> for sailing, and an appreciation for the visual and
> written arts.
> Becoming a first-time mother to a special needs
> child provides her
> with a unique perspective on the relationship
> between contemporary
> technology and the maternal instinct that comes
> with motherhood.
>
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
>
> *
> * CTHEORY is an international journal of theory,
> technology and
> * culture. Articles, interviews, and key book
> reviews in
> * contemporary discourse are published weekly as
> well as
> * theorisations of major "event-scenes" in the
> mediascape.
> *
> * Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
> *
> * Editorial Board: Jean Baudrillard (Paris), Paul
> Virilio (Paris),
> * Bruce Sterling (Austin), R.U. Sirius (San
> Francisco), Siegfried
> * Zielinski (Koeln), Stelarc (Melbourne), Richard
> Kadrey (San
> * Francisco), DJ Spooky [Paul D. Miller] (NYC),
> Timothy Murray
> * (Ithaca/Cornell), Lynn Hershman Leeson (San
> Francisco), Stephen
> * Pfohl (Boston), Andrew Ross (NYC), David Cook
> (Toronto), Ralph
> * Melcher (Sante Fe), Shannon Bell (Toronto), Gad
> Horowitz
> * (Toronto), Andrew Wernick (Peterborough).
> *
> * In Memory: Kathy Acker
> *
> * Editorial Correspondents: Ken Hollings (UK),
> * Maurice Charland (Canada) Steve Gibson
> (Canada/Sweden).
> *
> * Editorial Assistant: Ted Hiebert
> * WWW Design & Technical Advisor: Spencer Saunders
> (CTHEORY.NET)
> * WWW Engineer Emeritus: Carl Steadman
>
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
>
> To view CTHEORY online please visit:
> http://www.ctheory.net/
>
> To view CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA online please
> visit:
>
> http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/
>
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
>
> * CTHEORY includes:
> *
> * 1. Electronic reviews of key books in
> contemporary theory.
> *
> * 2. Electronic articles on theory, technology and
> culture.
> *
> * 3. Event-scenes in politics, culture and the
> mediascape.
> *
> * 4. Interviews with significant theorists,
> artists, and writers.
> *
> * 5. Multimedia theme issues and projects.
> *
> *
> * The Editors would like the thank the University
> of Victoria for
> * financial and intellectual support of CTheory.
> In particular, the
> * Editors would like to thank the Dean of Social
> Sciences, Dr. John
> * Schofield, the Dean of Engineering, Dr. D.
> Michael Miller and Dr.
> * Jon Muzio, Department of Computer Science.
> *
> * No use of CTHEORY articles without permission.
> Works from the
> * CTHEORY archive may only be reprinted with
> permission of the
> * Editors. Email ctheory@uvic.ca for more
> information.
> *
> * Mailing address: CTHEORY, University of Victoria,
> PO Box 3050,
> * Victoria, BC, Canada, V8W 3P5.
> *
> * Full text and microform versions are available
> from UMI, Ann Arbor,
> * Michigan; and Canadian Periodical Index/Gale
> Canada, Toronto.
> *
> * Indexed in: International Political Science
> Abstracts/
> * Documentation politique international;
> Sociological Abstract
> * Inc.; Advance Bibliography of Contents:
> Political Science and
> * Government; Canadian Periodical Index; Film and
> Literature Index.
> *
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ctheory mailing list
> ctheory@lists.uvic.ca
> http://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ctheory
=====
<http://www.naxsmash.net>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
------ End of Forwarded Message
Streaming situationist: invisible cities: eyes
New streaming
Weimar/Berlin(Hallestor) + invisibie cities (cities + signs 1 calvino/weaver
1974) + naxsmash music = new video 2004
Premiere Interactive Futures Victoria BC Open Space January 29 2004
<http://www.christinamcphee.net/texts/eyes.html>
--
Transmedia architectures
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.naxsmash.net>
Weimar/Berlin(Hallestor) + invisibie cities (cities + signs 1 calvino/weaver
1974) + naxsmash music = new video 2004
Premiere Interactive Futures Victoria BC Open Space January 29 2004
<http://www.christinamcphee.net/texts/eyes.html>
--
Transmedia architectures
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.naxsmash.net>