Addenda, Phenomenology, Embodiment: Cyborgs and Disability Perfomance

The sensationalized of 'addenda' of disabled people are as semiotic markers of difference and seductive performance invitations into a different form of embodiment. Maurice Merleau-Ponty says that visual representation is in a productive tension with a form of tactility, the physical extension of vision, that is, connection between tactility and visibility.

Aimee Mullins : Seduction and other beauty













Aimee Mullins is a disabled fashion model, athlete and activist who walks with leg prostheses. She embodies both the fascination of the ‘other’ – the exotic, strange and different, and at the same time, her representations seem to hover on the edge of inviting me into her living experience. She does not remain ‘other’, but comes closer. Through her photos and a TV commercials, we can stress the ruptures and tensions between the image of Mullins, and the phenomenologically accessible performance of that image.














Body spaces : A disability culture tech-performace














Body Spaces explores physicality and space, public access and intimacy, physical absence and digital presence. From ghostly video projections, stories and photographs emerge sensings of urban spaces inhabited in unfamiliar ways. Traces of previous habitations haunt the location, and motion-sensors invite the spectator to engage in the visual memory of dancing bodies. 3 site-specific installations, created by Petra Kuppers and collaborators, in a residency with young disabled people. Commissioned as part of Digital Summer 2000, presented October 2000, Manchester. Various screens were arranged around the Outpatient's Lobby, hung from the ceiling and from an old-fashioned medical screen. People could moved around and through the screens. The Geometries video was projected onto the screens. One of these projections was a Quicktime Movie, and a Director script on an i-Mac controlled a radio mouse sown into one of the screens (see photo) which moved the film when the mouse button was depressed. In addition to the screens, the installation created a pathway through the lounge - a continuous band tracing a wheelchair wheel around the space, and individual marks, tracing the footsteps of a walking person around the same circuit. During the installation, the enthusiastic workshop participants guided visitors around this circuit, proudly displaying their work. The pathway led to photos, shot by the residency participants, providing new angles on everyday objects in the lounge. Around these photos and objects, stories on coloured paper could be found, telling fantasy narratives inspired by these objects, imbuing them with a different and new life.The soundtrack for the installation was running as part of the video projections, but could also be manipulated via sensor pads, which would activate short soundbytes to weave into the soundscape.