Arts Thread

How do we use technologies to augment ourselves? How willing are we to allow technologies to permeate our bodies and change our very being? What is at the root of our desires to augment ourselves? Does our collective responsibility towards each other and our planet fold into our wish fulfillment for augmentation? To ask these questions in the form of an experience, I developed a performance installation called State of Being. Building a parallel world that sits between the line of oddly nostalgic yet unfamiliar and surreal, State of Being is situated in an apothecary experience. The installation uses magical realism to imagine a world where the focus of augmentations and enhancements are presented through a post-humanist and anti-capitalist lens. It is a direct response to the disembodied and dematerialized nature of our techno-futures. By proposing augments that magnify the embodied experience rather than separate brain and body, it counters the disembodied nature of typical technologized augments. By situating feeling in the physicality of our human bodies rather than the mind and its inner psyche, the proposed augments in this experience counters the dematerialized nature of technology. The set up of this installation was crucial to curating a lived experience that captivates my audience. Large and warped vinyl text hug the corner of its entrance, mimicking the feeling of walking into a wormhole of a different dimension. Upon entering the apothecary, the atmosphere immediately hits different – it is dense, mysterious, familiar, yet other-worldly. The space, bathed in rich warm orange lighting, is peppered with an eclectic curation of vintage tchotchke, hand-written chalk sketches and scenes from a futuristic science lab. Just as you would in a walk-in apothecary appointment – a diagnostic card is filled out and a consultation occurs with the apothecary. Personalized remedies are prepared for you, either to be ingested or topically absorbed. From the “Second Brain” augment that aims to amplify intuition as emotional and experiential data for your body, to the “Vagal Toner” augment that aims to stimulate your vagus nerve for widened nervous system threshold for dysregulation, the experience of receiving these augments invites the recipient to be better for our collective rather than for individualistic and competitive motives.