artwork: Lief Parker
Cyborg
Projects
I began the Cyborg Projects while undergoing Chemotherapy & Radiation
treatments for Cancer in Kelowna BC in 2002. I had recently seen the Cyborg
Show at the Vancouver Art Gallery & had the catalogue with me. Of particular
interest was Donna Haraway’s original article on Cyborg & feminist politics.
I was also reading a work on Werewolves. At this time my old friend and
collaborator John Mills-Cockell contacted me about writing some lyrics for a
CD project he was working on entitled Deliverance. I began to work on the
concepts re Deliverance that he was currently working with. My concept at
that time was to write some sort of story, which included the lyrics for
John but that the story would stand on its own.
The manuscript I produced was entitled Green River & I conceived of it as
some sort of fairy story wherein the hero, Green-River, was “delivered” from
being merely human (after also being transformed into a wolf) by his
transformation into cyborg. John used several of the lyrics from this
manuscript for his project released in 2004 as “Deliverance”. (Subsequently
I have become unhappy with the title because of my recent awareness of the
so-called Green-River murders in the US.).
I next embarked upon a somewhat different cyborg project with Jude (aka
Colin Davison) entitled the Roy King Story. This story used some of the same
setting as the original Green River story but took off in a sort of film
noir way, centered upon a cyborg that was having difficulty keeping up his
schedule of renovations. He had become, in fact, a renovation addict. This
was originally intended to be a sort of episodic film script with music by
Jude. Various life events interfered with this project and Jude went on to
create a really great CD of cyborg songs for a rock opera and my script
remains in an unfinished state.
Cyborg next entered into the picture when Ruby Truly and I began to work
together again on our “Wireless Bodies” Project. Simply because the cyborg
metaphor was foremost in my mind, I began to work with some of the materials
from the two earlier manuscripts with Ruby improvising her animated
cartoons. This is an ongoing project and we have applied to the Canada
Council for funding in 2005.
I have also recently entered into a collaborative project with my daughter,
the singer and songwriter Eva Tree. Again I am drawing upon the previous
cyborg materials but this time I am aiming for a sort of cyborg fantasy love
story. A CD and a multi-media performance are in the works for sometime in
2005.
At the core of the Cyborg projects is the image of the endlessly
mutating body whose activities span the arc of the sublime to the
despicable, the cyborg body composed of flesh and metal, immunized,
implanted, modified, genetically engineered and already set free to
circulate in the minds of post-human citizenry.
Historically, the ambiguous relations between humans and machines
invoke both fear and hope. It is clear that the introduction of ambiguity
into social relations tends to undo socially sanctioned relationships and
introduce any number of new potential relationships. We take the image of
cyborg as the metaphoric embodiment of this ambiguity – an unparalleled
image of both fear and hope. But, of course, over time, such ambiguity and
multiplicity cannot be maintained but enters into an evolutionary process
whereby some aspects of the new relations are accepted and others rejected.
Thus we have a sort of ritualized social passage from certainty, through
ambiguity and multiplicity, to a new certainty and stability.