THIS IS MY BODY, THIS IS MY SOFTWARE

At the invitation of BoCA, the French artist ORLAN presents, at 7 pm in the Sala dos Geradores, in the Central Tejo building, the public conversation “THIS IS MY BODY, THIS IS MY SOFTWARE”, with free entry. The talk takes place in connection with her first workshop in Portugal, which she runs at BoCA Summer School, between September 30th and October 2nd.

She shocked the world in the 1990s when she performed “The reincarnation of Santa ORLAN”, a series of nine plastic surgeries that were transmitted via satellite to several museums and art galleries in Europe. ORLAN was inspired by Botticelli’s Venus to change her chin, Mona Lisa to change her forehead and Europe by François Boucher to change her lips, in addition to implanting horns on the sides of her forehead. A body constantly invaded and manipulated by the violence of heteronormative oppression, which wants to control it, and by biotechnologies, which want to model it in the light of aesthetic standards. Today, thirty years later, we have naturalized identity alterations on our bodies, but through digital filters and other technological means that do not inscribe deep transformations in the flesh. During the operations, despite the anesthesia, ORLAN remained conscious and mixed skulls, fruits and vegetables in the scenery, read texts or made drawings with his fingers and his own blood: “I wanted to talk about how much women’s bodies are mistreated . (…) I was very radical, everyone thinks I’m a monster”.

ORLAN is one of the most important French artists, author of the manifesto “A Arte Carnal”. She uses sculpture, photography, performance, video, 3D, videogames, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and robotics, as well as scientific and medical techniques, such as surgery and biotechnology, to question social phenomena of our time. The artist praises the freedom of the body and of herself, with works that are protests against social paradigms and standards of beauty.