More than Individuals, Less than Multitudes: Bodies after the Anthropocene
Mateusz Chaberski
mateusz.chaberski@uj.edu.plJagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6490-2340
Abstract
This article argues that speculating about the world after the Anthropocene is inextricably linked to questioning the dominant (Western) modern conceptualizations of the human body as a self-contained entity, separated from its environment. In this context, the author looks closely at two recent performative projects that use Virtual Reality (VR) as a mode of speculative world-building. By generating intense multisensory and cognitive-affective experiences, they create conditions for “exosomatization” (Stiegler), which allows participants to become other entities and experience their own body as a multitude. Analyzing the installation Symbiosis (2020) by the interdisciplinary collective Polymorf, the author points out that the experience problematizes the ways of thinking about relations between humans and more-than-humans dominant in contemporary environmental humanities. Scrutinizing the installation Alienarium 5 (2022) by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, he shows that the experience of the body as a multitude requires not only specific “matters of care” (Puig de la Bellacasa), but also new ways of thinking and experiencing time.
Supporting Agencies
Keywords:
exosomatization, virtual reality, matters of care, AnthropoceneReferences
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Authors
Mateusz Chaberskimateusz.chaberski@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University in Kraków Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6490-2340
Mateusz Chaberski - PhD in Humanities, Assistant Professor in the Department of Performatics at the Jagiellonian University, is interested in critical studies of the Anthropocene, environmental humanities and cultural (re)presentations of post-extractive landscapes.
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Copyright (c) 2024 Mateusz Chaberski
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From issue 1/2018 to 3/2022 all articles were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
