Problematika utjelovljenja u online gleda(c)torstvu

Abstract

Digital media, and especially the widespread use of the internet, challenge our experience of embodied presence and consequently force us to rethink the definition of the ‘human’ body that informs our social practices. Starting from the online documentations of Guy Ben-Ary’s bio-artwork cellF (2015), Alvin Lucier’s seminal experimental music piece Music for Solo Performer (1965), and Stelarc’s performance RE-WIRED / RE-MIXED (2015) the present article participates in this debate by asking: what type of embodied identity is contoured in online specta(c)torship? From a methodological point of view, the article resonates with Mieke Bal’s insistence on the importance of the case study in art theory and in the philosophy of art. It aims at performing a philosophical intervention with respect to the contemporary understanding of embodiment starting from the experience proposed by the encounter with specific artworks.Drawing on the case studies mentioned above and on theories of embodiment formulated in a diversity of contexts — such as affect theory (Seigworth and Greg, Clough), feminist critique (Grosz, Butler), performance studies (Salazar Sutil) and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze —, the article contends that the problematic of the embodied subject, such as it appears in online specta(c)torship, is that of an ongoing misrecognition: an ongoing decentring of the thinking subject (of the cartesian cogito) in a continuous renegotiation of the bio-techno-logical ‘self’ that grounds the ‘I’ and is in turn grounded by it.