Body Horror 2.0

BACKGROUND:In 2010 I completed a PhD on Body Horror and art and technology, this led to my work being included in a high profile exhibition in Germany called Carnal Desire on the theme of meat. In 2017 my work was further curated into a new exhibition in Berlin also on the theme of meat called Flesh on Flesh. The explosion of the current contemporary media sphere and our relationship to technology puts the corporeal body back onto the cultural radar where we are often confronted with the aesthetic opposite of our digital, mediated reality and forced to re - familiarize ourselves with our own biological corporeality. In direct contrast to the digital screen and technology's perfection, speed, resolution, rationality, we are reminded our bodies remain primitive, irrational, messy and most of all abject. CONTRIBUTION Many of the video works in the exhibition form part of a body of work called Body Horror 2.0 Body horror 2.0 is a particular form of horror or confrontation where the sophistication of technology amplifies this state of awareness and horror of our primitive meat bodies. Bodies that after all, get sick, age, decay and die, while technology only improves and develops with the next software update. Body horror, or biological horror a genre of the horror film of the 1970's and 1980's was all about body confrontation in a different way, with the fear of contagion, of viruses, the fear of sexually transmitted diseases underpinned much of the destruction and degeneration of the body in numerous horror films from the period. SIGNIFICANCE My work was curated into this international exhibition at Momentum Gallery in Berlin. The exhibition also included a number of other high profile international artists such as Mariana Hahn, Sarah Ludemann, Nezaket Ekici, and Li Zhenhua. This was a significant exhibition for my practice with 7 of my video works selected by the curator. The exhibition coincided with an international artist in residency I undertook in Berlin.