A MICROCHIP INSIDE THE BODY

"Because Eduardo Kac is an artist and not a political activist, the event he realized at Casa das Rosas remains open to multiple interpretations. One can read the implant as a warning about forms of human surveillance and control that might be adopted in the near future. The Brazilian press approached the event mostly from this point of view. The scenario evoked is that a microchip implanted in our body from birth could become our only form of identification. Whenever we needed to be identified we would be scanned, and immediately a databank would show records revealing who we are, what we do, what kinds of products we consume, if we are in debt with to Internal Revenue Service, if we are facing criminal charges, or if we are hiding from the judicial system.

However, one can also read Kac's work from another perspective, as a sign of a biological mutation that might eventually take place, when digital memories will be implanted in our bodies to complement or substitute for our own memories. This reading is clearly authorized by the associations the artist makes between the implant of a numerical memory in his own body and the public exhibition of his familial memories, his external memories materialized in the form of photographs of his ancestors. These images, which strangely contextualize the event, allude to deceased individuals whom the artist never had the chance to meet, but who were responsible for the "implantation" in his body of the genetic traces he has carried from childhood and that he will carry until his death. Will we in the future still carry these traces with us irreversibly or will we be able to replace them with artificial genetic traces or implanted memories? Will we still be black, white, mulatto, Indian, Brazilian, Polish, Jewish, female, male, or will we buy some of these traces at a shopping mall? In this case, will it make any sense to speak of family, race, nationality? Will we have a past, a history, an "identity" to be preserved?", in "A MICROCHIP INSIDE THE BODY" de Arlindo Machado : http://ekac.org/amach.html
Raul Rabaça

sem titulo / técnica mista

Sim é verdade, que eu vou ser a chata do blog...mas talvez seja útil para alguém ler os meus devaneios idiotas e egoístas.

Nos momentos em que o meu dever e o meu coração estiveram em contradição, o primeiro raramente saíu vitorioso, a menos que bastasse eu abster-me; então, na maioria das vezes, eu era forte, mas sempre me foi impossível agir contra o meu feitio. Quer sejam os homens, o dever, ou mesmo a fatalidade quem comanda, sempre que o meu coração se cala a minha vontade fica surda e eu não sou capaz de obedecer. Vejo o mal que me ameaça e deixo-o chegar, em vez de agir para o evitar. Começo por vezes com esforço, mas esse esforço cansa-me e depressa me esgota e não sou capaz de continuar. Em todas as coisas imagináveis, aquilo que não faço com prazer logo se me torna impossível de levar a cabo.

Texto: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in "Os Devaneios do Caminhante Solitário"

Imagem: Maria Bleck Soares, Postal de natal para Quintas de Leitura, Teatro do Campo Alegre.

Talvez uma iniciação...

...ora então temos aqui o terceiro ano e quarto reunidos pela cadeira de litografia! Muito bem então, como eu não entendo muito sobre isto de "belogues", desculpem se se tratar de uma gafe, mas julgo ter aqui a hipotese de estrear o dito cujo... deixo o mote: Litho + Graphia, que dizem?

Bons escritos e "litos"