Ewelina Twardoch-Raś
(Jagiellonian University, Institute of Audiovisual Arts, Kraków)
Abstract:
The presentation proposes to investigate the problem of post-affective forms of work presented in contemporary bioartistic projects and pop-culture narratives. Post-affective work is understood here as a mode of body labour carried out using special technologies (mostly biometric ones) that measure, control and process affective body’s functions. The speech refers to the bioartistic projects of Rafael Lozano Hemmer: “Performance Review” (2013), “Pulse Index” (2010) and “Vicious Circular Breathing”(2013) and confront them with the vision of postaffective work presented in the episode “Fifteen Million Merits” of dystopian television series “Black Mirror”. In the both cases affective exploitation of living bodies is shown as a result of process of developing and common using of biometric technologies – a perfect tool for post-capitalist control and management. But – as projects present – it is something more than the reality of personal dataveillance (J. van Dijck). These technological systems based on dataveillance, process not only the obtained data, but also biological, affective body’s reactions and activities themselves (as muscle work or respiratory efficiency). Combining affects with technologies they create the broad area of contemporary post-affective forms of work based on biometric-driven exploitation of organism’s vitality. A simple reference to this type of practices in contemporary society can be found among others in the so-called sweat factories, but also in the necessary efficiency during the co called intellectual work. In the context of projects’ analysis the paper will consider problem of politicizing biological body and affective experiences (in reference to the considerations of Britta Timm Knudsen and Carsten Stage – categories of mediatized affect and vulnerable body). It will also refer to the category of ethos of health (Paul Rabinow, Nicolas Rose) – vision of body’s vitality that is categorized as an absolute social duty. Disabilities and disfunctions are therefore considered as a specific “state of emergency” that should be normalized, but only as an exceptional form of body condition (Giorgio Agamben). Moreover, the presentation will consider categories of self-cultivation (Michel Foucault) and self-invigilation (Thomas Lemke) as a binary opposition that constitute contemporary, dissonant biopolitical thinking of body’s developing, body which should always be able to work and be effective. Lastly, the paper will show how art and popular dystopian narratives reshapes, embodies and co-creates many problems raised by this socio-cultural paradigm.
Ewelina Twardoch-Raś – PhD in humanities (art sciences), assistant professor at Jagiellonian University (Institute of Audiovisual Arts), absolvent of doctoral studies and SET-program. She took part in many national and international conferences (in Vienna, Prague, London, etc.), she published her articles in many periodicals (“Przegląd kulturoznawczy”, “Kultura popularna”, “Kultura i historia”, “Topos”) and monographs (e.g. “Perception of culture, culture of perception”). She was an editor of four scientific books (the last one is “Perception of culture – culture of perception”). Her PhD dissertation concerns the representations and functions of biometrical data in the new media art. Now she is working on the book based on the PhD dissertation’s research. She teaches her students about changes in contemporary television, new media art and cyberculture’s phenomena. She is leading the scientific grant Preludium 8: “New media art and biometric data in the perspective of post- and transhumanist philosophy”.