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LUKAS ZPIRA - BODY HACKING - Body Hacktivism - Ritual Body - Putting an end with Baudrillard - Toward a political aproach of mutation BOD e-ART - BodyHacking & Mutations BODY HACKTIVIST, BODY HACTIVISM & BODY HACKING Created by Lukas Zpira at the dawn of 2004, in the land of the rising sun under the impulsion of Ryoichi Maeda, the term «body hactivist» was born from the necessity to define a mouvement of artists, reaserchers and thinkers working around mutations using body modifications as a medium, which, as oppposed to modern primitives who use tribal anthropology as their bases, practice, theorize and/or invent prospective avant garde body modifications, influenced by manga culture, comics, science fiction films and literature and made possible by a constant curiosity of the evolution of tekno-medical discoveries. These practices, experimental by essence, are defined as « Body Hacking », expressing the will of these artists, researchers and/or thinkers to surpass the bio-logical frontiers. The terms «body hacktivist» and «body hacktivism» also signifies the necessity of action, to take our destiny into our own hands by the perpetual will to reinvent ourselves. De facto, by his research work, creations and his practice of unusual implantation techniques derived from plastic and/or cosmetic surgery and largely influenced by televised series such as «STAR TREK» Steve Haworth can be considered as one of the fathers of this mouvement. «body hacktivism» doesn’t include the necessity to be modified. All modified persons are not necessarily considered as «body hacktivists». Beyond all, «body hactivism» must be perceived as a philosophy, as a state of mind. Osaka.04-j14/545bit ------- RITUAL BODY Whether it is to tear itself out from its initial condition, to mark its membership or a fundamental step in life, mankind has always used rituals. We therefore inscribe ourselves in an offspring that takes its source since the dawn of time. But let us not be mistaken… "Our purpose is not to exorcise the wandering of our peers, nor is it a kind exhibition attending to some neo-fakirism .But we want to anticipate the unavoidable rising of mutants and so-called cyborg era. Not so long ago, this was still fantasy from a few S-F enthusiast or visionary terrorists who declared a permanent state of pregnancy that would give birth to monsters and mutants and all that scares us" . (Daniel Romani) It is not a dehumanizing process either but rather making a choice of our human shape, trying to make our dreams come true instead of life stealing them from us, to give an adequation to I and the self, the right being in the right shell. Here we stand at the dawn of the virtual era and dataflesh, we are primitives, just as men of the palpable, the real, the flesh facing a world they had not explored yet. For us as for them, rituals set out bearings that redefine the individual again… "The collapsing of identity is favoured by the virulence of an experience that carries the initiated beyond their former anchorage, provided pain associated to physical branding is a sanction of instant gravity, a guarantee of memory and a gash to destabilize a personality from henceforth bygone. The initiated is socially redefined by the physical modifications of his appearance. Pain confirms the seal of the contract, giving birth to a new man, grown stronger with this feeling of having overcome the challenge it reveals an ardent wish of existence.” Any pain involves metamorphosis and cast in a brand new dimension of life. Men discover new metaphysics that disrupt their relationship with the others and towards the world". (David LeBreton) Because this mutation holds the unalterable strength of the symbol imprinted on the very skin, because modifying is not mutilating, and changing ourselves may be the best way to change the world. The point is to keep our way in a world where our imaginary is the boundary. This is the reason why a ritual must be a self-experience not a demonstration. Someone trying to realise himself and not prove something, like a phoenix born again from its ashes. Stripes make the difference between a zebra and a donkey… In our urban jungle where television has replaced the fireplace and where our eves happen on networks, it is freewill makes the difference between animals and us. The more we move away from it the more we wonder about this body becoming an “accessory of presence” (David Lebreton) this body reflecting the image of a god which is getting harder and harder to believe in. Nature evolves, the point is to remain in harmony with it and try to understand if we, like Promethee, are half gods taking part in one of the big revolutions of this world, or are we mere puppets, smallest cogs of a dark and monstrous celestial machine, ready to pour the drop that will make the Graal overflow. Lucas Zpira.00 ------- PUTTING AN END WITH BAUDRILLARD I am Lukas Zpira, .01 from a new artistic experimentation based upon mutation, its koncept is an attempt of merging between body and spirit I have defined as the kor taking its roots in Lucas Zpira, born in 93 from the ashes of a man you do not know, forgotten by everyone, even myself. But what the hell is Lukas Zpira.01 if not a work made of flesh and blood, this blood reminding me of the life it is dedicated to, which message is the power of evolution, the opportunity of wondering … Do not be surprised then if I am not anymore the man you see here. My absence is involuntary, it is even less a sign of scorn, it only means that the quest of this new Avant-garde I am helping giving birth takes me a little further everyday, maybe to make me realize how numerous we are … Among these fighters of some counter-culture, lots of them understood that a revolution – including its etymology and its spirit – means at first to move around oneself, to change in order to be able to at last participate to the big changes that will soon modify our world and conception of humanity. No one among us has sacrificed his body to the idea of any sacrifice as Baudrillard believes it, but rather his natural appearance to the benefit of his true nature, in order to give a kor to that image constantly dropped back to us by our residual inner memory, to be at last what we deeply want to be, just what we are and not what has been tried to make of us for such a long time. Obviously, in this century of image we easily play the game of appearances, it is however stupid and reducing to believe that working on the shape, we deny the foundation. Some things do exist far beyond these appearances, reachable to cleverness only. Our body is just the medium through which we redefine our mental confections. The matter really is to prefigure this new kind of humanity that will soon not be one anymore, and whether we sometimes tend ourselves to this sort of inventory that Baudrillard calls ‘pathetic and burlesque’ maybe also because it is necessary for our own speeches and allows us to realize this is not fiction but upper-reality at most and we do not carry on our tips the stigmata of this who was given up by his father at the same time than the World. No misunderstanding, we do not wish to end in a bowl because we do not pretend to be something else then the subjects of our own observation and, through it, this of the World. If something should survive from us, may it be some of our best ideas because in a Cybernetic Anthropological Museum, our kor will only have the strength of the episode, similar to these wings of wood and paper some crackpots tried to have flying at the beginning of the last century. However we sometimes make mistakes … Maybe they are necessary in order to be deeply conscious of the limits demanded from us and thus settle the basements upon which others will soon built their success. It is just too bad that many like Baudrillard are quick to judge only through these mistakes … Perhaps simply because overtaking the limits, breaking some doors, we did not realize they were just behind and got smashed in the face . lukas zpira - San Francisco.01-j163/985beats ------- TOWARD A POLITICAL APPROACH OF MUTATION Far from being a narcissistic quest, a teenager's revolt against his family, or any other kind of "pathetic or burlesque" experiment of self- mutilation, as some may claim, as if to better reduce it, the assertion of the reapropriation of the body by a few contemporary artists experimenting with the range of possible mutation, goes far beyond: it is a major political statement. The recent declarations made in France by the presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen highlights the importance of this issue: " To maintain that your body belongs to yourself is wholly trivial: it belongs to life, and thus it belongs in part to the nation". Although this submission of the body has at all times been emblematic of totalitarian regimes, through the image of the perfect man with his thoughts as smooth as his skin, one should not forget how this domination of the self is by no means their exclusivity, but that it has been practiced throughout the centuries, and this since the "lex romana", across regimes and oceans, ranging throughout the western world by way of migrations, without ever being called in question. In fact as recently as late 1999 when it was upheld by ordinance of the European Court of Justice, and no one was even moved by it. General ignorance about these facts has led some body artists to assert that it is the only thing that really belongs to us at all! This body possessed by a controlling thought becomes representative of man's position of submission faced with the nation, of the individual faced with the masses, which is only free to exist and think within the limited framework of imposed rules that have always been accepted in the name of "general interest" and of the so-called "common sense". No wonder if the medical profession adopts a conniving stance, posing as a guardian of the pseudo-scientific values of the West. (One must not forget that this medicine rejects some alternative medicines like the millenary Chinese one.) They thus guarantee them the monopoly on our destiny and also on our power of life and death over our selves. Furthermore, they reserve themselves the right to define the rules of correct appearance and thought, they take the liberty of considering deviant all other "extra-normal" or individualistic behaviour. This could eventually lead to social exclusion, to psychiatric wards or even to prisons, at the discretion of particular regimes. The new interest taken by the French government into even the softest of body modifications has apparently attracted some new allies among some of the practitioners who were looking for a respectability they hadn't yet acquired because of their “former” status. The gutter press let these moralists, disguised as elder brothers or elder sisters, repeat that the open-minded we are were gurus, this based on the simple fact that our ideas do not enter into the consensus which they were the former spokesmen. Their reject of the established rules might have as a ground a post-teenage crisis. They might not be aware of the action they engaged at this time. In this pre-defined framework, the possible mutations given to us by the technology nowadays will remain limited to additional means to handle what we appear to really be: sheep. By this way, how long will it take governments, approved by the medical association, by moral guarantee of the Church and with the support of intellectuals like Baudrillard, to attack directly the artists we are, and who, through the re-appropriation of our own body, through its re-definition, who, by the awareness and the free choice we make of our bodily future, and by some works that have to do with the frontiers of legality and explore those of possibility, have set out to retake what they have been stolen from : themselves? ------- "Il existe bien, au delà des apparences, certaines choses accessibles à la seule intelligence... / Some things do exist far beyond appearances, reachable by intelligence only..." Lukas Zpira BOD e-ART - BodyHacking & Mutations www.body-art.net Thanks to Lukas Zpira.
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