Like Stelarc, Revital Cohen is fascinated by the human body. Especially, she is interested in a particular research area that focuses on creating artificial Nano-cells for medical purposes. Revital’s work for Biotopia deals with the possibility of using these cells to create an artificial body that allows people to become electronic organisms. The work consists of a video projection of documentation and drawings of the artificial body part; the appendicitis.
It is often technology that exposes the human to new situations, which facilitate the enhancement of philosophical studies of ‘ourselves’ and our phenomena (however not as a ’creation’ of something ’new’ – which is considerably more complex affair that makes new phenomena and representations outside the existing representation framework, appear or emerge). We will never be able to see the world as one thing or perceive it as a panorama where we may only describe it within a fixed frame – and from a static point. The point of Biotopia is to point out how things are moving out of their fixed frames. Things should not be seen as phenomena experienced by a subject ‘outside’ the phenomena, but as a result of one, so to speak, collaborative experience horizon, where body and mind interact in affective and sensitive processes. We need to move with things to try to understand them. The exploration of the body by art – as both the transformer of flesh and ideas – is one of the means at our disposal to achieve such a conceptual movement.
All images and films are the copyright of the artist and cannot be used “in any way” without their expressed consent.