Week 4: MedTech + Art

The thing that struck me most about the intersection of MedTech and Art was plastic surgery as an art form, and my intrinsic disgust towards the extreme aspects of it. While images of robotic arms and implanted microchips enabling cyborg-like abilities seem both practical and artistic (as I remember familiar scenes such as in Starwars Return of the Jedi) plastic surgery for the purpose of making a person beautiful has a certain “don’t cross this line or else” factor that I can’t ignore.

Henry Damon has had surgery to make himself look like Red Skull (Simon)

Specifically the mention of Orlan with her 9 plastic surgery operations (Barbara) and the idea of the show nip tuck show made me feel uneasy as soon as I started hearing about it. I’d like to throw into the mix the man who has had many plastic surgeries to make himself appear more like Red Skull from the comic book series Captain America (Simon). These people look horrific to me, but I had to think twice about the situation to be sure why.

A poster from one of Orlan's shows showing some very shocking imagery. (Barbara)

What is complex is the idea that these people are really expressing themselves in an artistic way, similar to what people have been doing for centuries. In America it common and accepted to tattoo your body (I have one), to get piercings, and even a little bit of plastic surgery is fashionable. In addition many tribal cultures (ezakwantu) have unique piercing and body stretching techniques that seem extreme but acceptable under different cultural norms.

African Body Art (ezakwantu)

So what is it about Orlan and others that seems to push the boundary? Chuck Palahniuk (the author of Fight Club) deals with similar issues in his fictional book Invisible Monsters in which (spoiler alert) the two main characters deform themselves on purpose to prove to society and themselves that they won’t be controlled by the pervasive ideas of their cultures. This author has many great insights into our modern culture and in this case he sheds light onto the fact that people feel estranged by stringent definitions of beauty that society puts forth and at the same time empowered by the advances of medical technology, pushing them to shock the public and say, “I don’t live by your rules”, in an attempt to re-define beauty and art through disfigurement of their own bodies. I think there is a line that has been crossed here; if you need to shock people, at the risk of permanent disfigurement, to feel that you are truly expressing yourself, I think you have made a serious mistake. In Orlan’s own words “’Being a narcissist isn't easy when the question is not of loving your own image, but of recreating the self through deliberate acts of alienation.’”(Barbara) Then again who am I to tell people what to do with their bodies?

  

Rose, Barbara. "Orlan: Is It Art?" Stanford.edu. Standford, n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

McCormack, Simon. "Comic Book Fan Chops Off Nose To Look Like Captain America Villain Red Skull (GRAPHIC PHOTOS)." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

"African Body Modification – Body Art Scarification - Tattoo." African Body Modification – Body Art Scarification - Tattoo. Ezakwantu, n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Invisible Monsters. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Print.