Reading Critical Art Ensemble's Flesh Machine
Flesh Machine original website
Performed at five different venues during 1997-1998, Flesh Machine is
a multimedia, interactive performance installation that frames new
reproductive technologies as eugenics. CAE characterizes eugenics as "a
perfect complement to the capitalist political-economic imperative of
authoritarian control through increased rationalization of culture" but
suggests that eugenics has been marginal since it became associated with
Nazi social policy, and therefore counter to "democratic principles of
choice." (Read the full project position paper on the Flesh Machine website.)
Nearly fifteen years after Flesh Machine was first performed, we
might wonder whether eugenics is "still waiting in the wings"? One
point that is worth clarifying is whether eugenics really requires the
"radical improvements" in medico-scientific interventions that biotech
advertising, popular opinion, and even some of the CAE materials suggest
is either here or right around the corner. In fact, historians and
science and technology studies (STS) writers might argue that the power
of eugenics derives less from the actual control of human traits
that eugenic practices can offer, but the promise and illusion of
control. Eugenics is built, after all, on several key misconceptions
about human ontology, most importantly the idea that socially-important
human "types" correspond well with biological "types" or traits.
Viewing Flesh Machine with this in mind, it is interesting to notice the
elements of language, technology, and rhetorical tone that CAE have so
effectively lifted from corporate biomedical research in order to convey
a sense of scientific mastery, predictability, and the "naturalness" of
consumer choice in the realm of reproduction.
In all elements of Flesh Machine, viewer/participants encounter a
critique of NRT (and modern, capitalist biomedicine in general) based on
rejection of mechanization of the body, alienation of human feelings and
emotions from bodily parts and functions, and a fundamentally dangerous
drive to "purify" human bodies and populations. This piece compels
multiple reactions and readings, which change for me every time I
revisit it. For example, as much as I am awed by the intelligence and
aesthetic appeal here, I see a thread of romantic heteronormativity that
runs through the piece, in the repeated indictment of new reproductive
technologies for "separating sexuality from reproduction." Both
feminists and queers have generally celebrated the split of these
telos-twins, and I can't share in a longing to reconnect the two. But
the denunciation was still useful because it made me think, not for the
first time, of the problematic way that focusing on reproductive
"technologies"—even capaciously, as we do in this issue—again leaves
heteronormative reproduction outside the spotlight, even as other social
and material practices (e.g., adoption) come under scrutiny. This is
why I think we need art to think well and act with justice in relation
to reproductive technologies. Complex, powerful pieces like Flesh
Machine simultaneously convey layered meanings without a need to
resolve, prioritize, or logically order them. Perhaps more importantly,
the emotional responses they call forth remind me of Lauren Berlant's
notion of public spheres as "affect worlds," which suggests that we
can't simply think our way out of the dilemmas that reproductive
technologies pose for us. We need to sit with the emotions that
circulate in this realm, which means not mis-reading technological
reproduction as "affect-free", but parsing the specific affective
attachments we have to technology, with all its beautiful, clean, and
orderly aesthetics and its promise of a better future.
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