Technoetic Arts - Current Issue

Emerging brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) such as Neuralink have profoundly contributed to the social/political imaginaries of western techno-scientific culture. Though currently focused on medical devices that would enable people with quadriplegia to mentally manipulate computer interfaces, ‘cure’ blindness and ‘solve’ autism and schizophrenia, Neuralink ultimately aims to ‘replace the cell phone’ with BCI as the dominant human–technology interface. Inspired by Eli Clare, this article argues that Neuralink’s emphasis on ‘solving’ bodymind troubles with invasive technology smuggles in a pernicious aesthetic of cure – a political aesthetic which treats disabled human bodies and, by extension, humanity itself as something to be transcended, fixed, normalized and overcome. In contrast, this article proposes a cyborg anaesthetics, a human–technology framework that does not follow logics of bodily transcendence or overcoming. Riffing on Cressida Heyes’s definition of ‘anaesthetics’ as liminal practices that resist neo-liberalism’s emphasis on productivity and progress, and through the artistic practices of Mallory Kay Nelson and Marco Donnarumma, this article explores the anaesthetics of cure evident in cyborg transgressions, i.e. cyborg and cripborg artistic practices that do not strive towards bodily liberation, overcoming or transcendence, but instead take the body as constitutive for human being and as a locus of exploration, experimentation, cooperation and resistance.

This article critically explores the modern hegemonic knowledge structures, focusing on their scientification, colonization and systematization through human-centred representational systems that prioritize rationality, objectivity and control. Drawing on decolonial studies and the ontological turn, the article investigates two art research groups – ACTlab (Brazil) and RAT (Finland) – which merge other-than-human entities, artificial intelligence, ecological systems and digital networks to propose non-hegemonic approaches to knowledge. The artworks Boreal Intelligence by Cesar and Lois and Laura Beloff’s Elementary demonstrate the critical potential of art to challenge human exceptionalism, fostering connections among living organisms, technology and ecological systems. These practices reframe knowledge as plural, dynamic and deeply embedded in the web of life. The re-evaluation of traditional human-centric perspectives is essential in addressing the poly-crisis of our time, providing new pathways for engaging with the web of life.

Twinning the aborted foetus and death row prisoner as subjects in extremis, this article attempts to reconcile my own experiences and place them within a broader ethical framework. I argue that there is substantial moral ambiguity in whom we choose to privilege for survival or destroy that undermines a definitive pro-life or pro-choice position, as those concepts are commonly understood. My primary argument is that there are always exceptions to rules, to cases, to experiences that need to be acknowledged and considered alongside the power relations that come with the right to define and decide who lives and dies. This is an interrogation of my own moral parameters, written throughout pregnancy with children who went on to live, and an examination of my own bias and fear of causing or experiencing suffering that informed my previous abortion. Technological intervention is troubling the concepts of what constitutes ‘living’ and ‘dying’ – to what counts as ‘life’. Technologies that keep the moribund infant alive are creating a liminal space where subjects hang in between life and death so that our concept of both may need to be redefined to include ‘a living death’, akin to a life spent on Death Row.

Current trends in critical theory often rely on outdated conceptions of what it means to ‘create’. This article contributes to formulate new categories for a theory of creation that maintains a connection with human experience and praxis. To this purpose, it begins by criticizing two of the most influential theories of ontological creation of the past century: the one formulated by Gilbert Simondon in Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (1958) and the one put forward by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus (1980). These two theories will be identified as symmetrical perspectives based on an opposite kind of relationism, yet connected by a persistent naturalism. An alternative will be searched in two cases from contemporary art, Neri Oxman’s device Mushtari and Pierre Huyghe’s installation Variants (2021–present), capable of suggesting new conceptual parameters for creation. In the last paragraph, I will focus on three creative principles stemming from the above-mentioned cases that can effectively overcome the ontogenetic conception of creation and address today’s need for political creativity and divergent praxis.

It is widely acknowledged that soil comprises an abundance of both biotic and abiotic components, rendering it a complex and dynamic milieu in which these elements are intricately entangled. Scholars have redirected their attention to the significance of soil, its functions and the diverse array of life it sustains, fostering critical discussions that challenge traditional anthropocentric perspectives. In the realm of art, in response to the urgency of environmental concerns in contemporary society, artists have begun to explore soil in innovative ways. Soichiro Mihara’s Making Soil (2021–present) is a notable example. Mihara is an artist who presents a system open to the world and attempts to reinterpret natural materials and phenomena as art. In this work he focuses on the soil, which is the key to the material cycle that today’s environmentally conscious people unconditionally endorse. His work visualizes life and death, the entanglement of diverse beings and decomposition in the soil, and foregrounds the fact that the material cycle itself is designed. Therefore, this article reveals that Making Soil draws our attention to attitudes and behaviours that we take for granted in solving the current crises and issues, serves as a critical reflection on them, and prompts us to reconsider their implications and consequences.

Although disasters and political ecology problems continue to grow on a global scale, the states and their stakeholders still make decisions that can escalate risks and vulnerabilities. Within their populist discourse, they use political ecology imaginaries, which shape collectively held future visions and regulate desires and beliefs about values, norms and ways of life. Since imaginaries become an extension of control, it is critical to explore counter and alternative political ecology imaginaries for possible futures especially in disaster-prone countries. This study aims to explore alternative political ecology imaginaries and possible, future makings of contemporary artworks. Through the lens of feminist accounts in political ecology and science and technology studies (STS), this exploratory research is based on the qualitative analysis of five purposefully sampled contemporary artworks from Turkey, a disaster-prone country where political ecology risks and vulnerabilities are high and the imaginaries of the state and its stakeholders are extremely authoritative and popularized. Research methodology of the study mainly consists of a literature review, discourse analysis, field notes and participatory observation. The findings of the study contribute to disclose the transgressions around knowledge claims in political ecology studies. Counter and alternative political imaginaries of contemporary artistic research generate possible futures for more-than-human-worlds.