IKLECTIK presents,
Sex Re-boot
Friday 27 May 2022 | 8pm [7:30 doors]
Tickets: £10 General Admission / £6 Student / Unwaged https://buytickets.at/iklectik/702220
Programme
8pm – Sian Fan [Installation available for audience interaction throughout the evening]
8.15pm – Portia Yuran Li
8.30pm – Break
9pm – Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
Break
9.45pm Nicole Bettencourt Coelho + Byuka + Sasha Wilde (30 min)
* timeline might vary depending on the flow of the performance and the co-creation with the audience. However we are aiming for a 8pm sharp start.
IKLECTIK is thrilled to present the first onsite event as part of the new Performance art curatorial fellowship curated by Dyana Gravina.
The first of 3 stages research, (Jan-May), looked into posthumanist theories in relation, or friction, with embodiment, sex and pleasure through an intersectional feminist approach. The research led to concerns related to how ‘humalike’ technologies, AI sex Robots in particular, and how they replicate ideas of heteronormative power structures and aesthetics, violence, systems of oppression, with a specific focus on the notions of ‘female’, pleasure and its exploitation.
Harmful biases in humanlike technologies are entrenched in their conception and expand in how we interact and shape them. Suppose prejudices and harmful stereotypes are embedded in our society, and human-to-human interaction is transferred into humanlike technologies. In that case, we cannot avoid looking at the problem from a sociological perspective as well as engineeristic, acknowledging that the problem is in ‘us’ and not in the technologies.
To start thinking of a cyborg, queer and ethically repurposed technologies, this platform wants to address these issues and invest in social change within an interdisciplinary framework. The aim of this first event is to propose works that both critically raise questions around these biases and yet serve as a gateway to imagining multitude narratives around gender identities, where the distinction between humans and robots blends into the erotic pleasure and a-gendered reproduction powers.
Selected artists: Portia Yuran Li, Sian Fan, Dominique Savitri Bonarjee and Nicole Bettencourt Coelho + Byuka + Sasha Wilde.
Portia Yuran Li’s performative installation explores humans and machines’ dual enmity and interdependence, further bringing up how “Gender-based violence” and “abuse of violence” magnify each other and fall into a mirror-image cycle. The performance shows us how the real cyborg has a deep fusion of objectification and sexualisation—and how women and artificial objects further shape each other.
Sian Fan is fascinated by virtual identities and how we construct virtual bodies that exist in hyperspace beyond our physical bodies. She is concerned with the complexities of spiritual experience and with being human in our increasingly digitised and hyperconnected world. Through her work, she hopes to discover new ways for us to coexist with technology and find new narratives and existence for the ‘feminine’ within the making of technologies and the interactions with them.
In Dominique’s piece, a space of ‘electromagnetic field of aliveness dissolves human/nonhuman, subject/object dualities. Mind Rave moves between mediums to embody the philosophy of between-ness and to reclaim desire, seduction and wonder as the rhythms and tempos of life (not capital). This poetic activism inspires to create works of reverence and union with a more-than-human eroticism. Handcrafting and ‘women’s work’, soft materials and perishability as the con-tempo-rary art of now, prioritising an ecologically responsible stance with a biofeedback wearable called the Crochet Resistance Suit.
Using sound, movement and wearable technologies, Nicole, Byuka and Sasha will use their interest in erotics, sensual experience, spirituality and embodiment to seek other-than possibilities to create conditions for collaborative feeling and channeling in the present moment. When designing a technological platform for performance, the physical, intuitive, sensual experience is considered to ask the question: Will it feel good?
“Sound system powered by AMOENUS. AMOENUS is an art organisation that facilitates, educates, curates and promotes immersive art centred around 3D sound”.
https://amoenus.co.uk
