This is a Lutyens Marianantoni project 

Youzeye 2009 (c)  Curated by Jeff Koan Baysa

The Excarnation Machine (BETA) is a participatory game that involves assembling and breathing life into an assortment of hi-tech media representations of the human body, generating a 21st century take on the “exquisite corpse.”  Our project addresses some of the ethical provocations that contemporary science brings to us, such as genetic manipulation and mutation from within and plastic surgery from without.  

By representing the human body with MRI’s, X-rays or ultrasounds, we break through the body’s physical boundaries, removing its sense of gravity and turning it into an anti-terrestrial and quasi-ethereal entity.  Thus, in a sense, the body ascends into a cosmic dimension, and yet, at the same time, the antiseptic process of medical imaging causes a qualitative dilution that presents us with a human portraiture that is void of vitality, emotion and warmth.  

The dissolution and virtual reassembly of the physical body implies both the death of the entity itself and, at the same time, its resurrection and reincarnation. However, in this case it is not a matter of blind faith in spiritual dogma, but a firm belief in numeric values peopled with vectors and points. The resulting configurations allow us to play with and give life to a new body. The visitors, then, become the authors of this transmutation and resurrection process. They are like alchemists who use processes of sublimation and precipitation in order to create their long sought after pre-naissance.  

With the advent of the manipulation of human genes, identified gene segments clearly appear to be patentable, creating a kind of Oklahoma Land Rush on our own genetic make-up.  It is somewhat disturbing to know that companies that are traded on the stock market own certain segments of our “selves”.  Ownership issues related to genetic mutation surfaced when the scientists who actually generated the fluorescent green “GFP Bunny” challenged the presumed creator artist Eduardo Kac.  In contrast, our system is an open source platform that allows visitors to “sketch-out” possible new configurations of the human body in a playful and yet provocative way. 

As the visitors spark new life into the mutant creature of their choice by stirring and combining body parts, so the new corpse becomes alive or “exquisite” with the addition of a beating heart.  In doing so, we explore the possibilities of generating new life.  We remind ourselves that with the astounding progress of surgical virtualization and visualization tools the possibilities at hand become so much more than patching up and healing defective body parts, or even making flesh more attractive to the eye, but brings home our full scope as generators of new worlds and the life forms within.  However, in the process, let us not forget Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wise quip: "There is a crack in everything God has made."