My body is a Limitation (2018)

Fig 1. "My body is a limitation". Still from video work. 

Fig 1. "My body is a limitation". Still from video work. 

Fig 2. "My body is a limitation". Still from video work. 

Fig 2. "My body is a limitation". Still from video work. 

Fig 3. "My body is a limitation". Still from video work. 

Fig 3. "My body is a limitation". Still from video work. 

Fig 4. "My body is a limitation". Still from video work. 

Fig 4. "My body is a limitation". Still from video work. 

My body is a limitation

 

I am limited by my breasts, they ache of womanhood. They beat against my body as I run, a reminder of the weight which is contained in them, the eyes which follow them. But here I am isolated. Here it goes beyond a social limitation. It is the tie to the flesh which has betrayed me and a more severe approach is demanded.

 

I am limited by my form. My knees ache as I attempt to the climb to freedom, this physicality is to tasking on my joints. Inclines act as a hindrance.

 

I am limited by my internal self. My stomach, my intestines betray me at every chance. Despite a lack of constant food supply, my bodies priorities appear not to be in sustainability. Perhaps a sign that it too understands that it no longer is a valid shell from which I can stream my consciousness from.

 

Milk, oil, spice, my body rejects it all. Rice even, the most basic forms of fuel cannot satisfy it. I am banished to isolation as a result of pain, of frustration and of shame. There is no comfort in these flaws, together or alone, my body is uncomfortable in itself, fighting internally.   

(PAUSE)

 

I am preparing my escape from these limitations. I am pursuing freedom above all else, freedom from my ailments and the physicality of my body which forces me into a particular social stratum. I yearn for a voice free of this meat sack. It crushes my throat, air struggles to pump through it, my lungs cannot expand large enough to cultivate a strength I demand.

 

My flesh no longer has value, what once was a malleable space of growth is no longer a worthy contribution. It takes far more than it gives. So, I turn to a cyborg form, an uploading of the self, a form of the virtual self, free of the confines of the flesh.

 

This escape is a challenge, any change towards something better than what was once before demands strain, effort and disruption. As I struggle, my flesh attempts to foil my escape. Every breath is both a sign of my body begging to pause, a reconsideration and yet also a sign of this necessary evolution. It persists as a rattling reminder of what I am pushing to leave behind.

 

(PAUSE)

 

The attention to my body is amplified, just as it begins to dissolve and break up, I am acutely aware of each molecule, each piece. I feel my form dissolving.

 

(PAUSE)

 

Oh what a relief, my consciousness is freed. Perhaps to immortality or perhaps to a more liberated mortality, and into the sublime.

Fig 5. Installtion of sound piece "My body is a limitation". 

Fig 5. Installtion of sound piece "My body is a limitation". 

My body is a limitation has existed in multiple formats, both as video, isolated audio and screen printed text all which navigate the physical nature of the body as an obstacle to conscious freedom. The work is an extension of some of the principles outlined in Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto (1991) as well as ideas of transhumanism, both which outline a social and physical escape of the body through technological means. This work presents ‘the virtual’ as an escape however it does not define it, allowing a potential utopian future, as opposed to a more concrete and tangible dystopian present. This work functions as a theoretical bodily escape for myself, but also as a template or guide in which those who feel limited by their bodily flesh may attempt to perform an escape by. This instructional aspect is emphasized by the (PAUSE) within the text, encouraging a specific bodily engagement, of both breath and speech.

The images present are stills from the video version of this work, below is a image of the installation of the slightly modified and isolated sound that accompanied the video piece. Alongside it is a stack of screen printed write up's with the full text being recited. 

Video link: https://youtu.be/xFrpRQHGWiw