Of Shit and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment in Contemporary Culture
"Since the 1980s, popular media, literature and theory have suggested that technology has induced a newly evolved, posthuman and postmodern cyborg consciousness. This article examines the premise of human evolution towards a disembodied `post-human' state in cyberpunk literature and film, as well as some influential cyber-theory. Rather than indicating a revolutionary change in human consciousness, both cyber-lit and cybertheory incorporate and reinscribe Western Christian narratives about human identity. Images of disembodiment tend to reaffirm traditional religious concepts of human reproduction, individual consciousness, spirit and body, and life after death."
This article discusses ideas that the media utilises images of "perfect beauty" which is difficult achieve, therefore making it inevitable that the attempt of women to better their appearance will always continue, aiding sales of products which the images promote. Really interesting! This whole concept reminds me of this idea of people chasing an unachievable dream... "Nothing's perfect, but that doesn't stop us chasing the dream – a Catch-22 "
"Images of female bodies are everywhere. Women—and their body parts—sell everything from food to cars. Popular film and television actresses are becoming younger, taller and thinner. Some have even been known to faint on the set from lack of food. Women’s magazines are full of articles urging that if they can just lose those last twenty pounds, they’ll have it all—the perfect marriage, loving children, great sex, and a rewarding career."
"Why are standards of beauty being imposed on women, the majority of whom are naturally larger and more mature than any of the models? The roots, some analysts say, are economic. By presenting an ideal difficult to achieve and maintain, the cosmetic and diet product industries are assured of growth and profits. And it’s no accident that youth is increasingly promoted, along with thinness, as an essential criterion of beauty. If not all women need to lose weight, for sure they’re all aging, says the Quebec Action Network for Women’s Health in its 2001 report Changements sociaux en faveur de la diversité des images corporelles. And, according to the industry, age is a disaster that needs to be dealt with."
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An article i came across on the Guardian website (artist of the week - Lee Bull)
Beauty gone mad is the theme for this Korean artist, whose too-perfect cyborg women and crystalline edifices are both sensual and sinister
"Korean artist Lee Bul. In the 1990s, her cyborg sculptures took an obsession with prosthetics and plastic surgery to a gleaming conclusion: ideal robot women. More recently, she's turned to the futuristic architectural fantasies of the early 20th century. Elaborate sculptures and installations are crafted from twisted metal, decked in crystal beads and chains, set in mirrored boxes or hung from the ceiling like castles in the air. Hectic and gorgeous, they suggest another kind of post-human world, where shimmering modernist buildings lie in seductive ruin."
"The past five years have seen Bul make a break with this aesthetic, though beauty gone mad remains an abiding theme. Her 2007 series, Sternbau , was inspired by visionary architect Bruno Taut's proposals for a crystalline city in the Alps, which date from 1917; darkly sparkling, chandelier-like hanging sculptures sprawl outwards, laden with out-of-control décor. An installation from the same year, Heaven and Earth, explores her own country's embattled modernisation: in a scruffy, white-tiled bathroom resembling a torture chamber, a bath is filled to the brim with foul-smelling black goop. Reflected in this well of horrors is an ice-white sculpture of Baekdu mountain, the mythical birthplace of the Korean nation. Luxurious and sinister, Bul's art mines a terrible beauty that seems to stretch endlessly into past and future, grimly dehumanising and forever compelling. "
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