Week 4: MedTech+Art
I come from South Korea. People often mock it as the world capital of plastic surgery. And it's true, the fakeness of cosmetic plastic surgery is rampant in Korea. Receding hairline? Pull it forward a few millimeters. Not happy with how your eyelid looks? Get a double lid surgery.
Let's jump over to ORLAN. Her artistry certainly is bold. It draws strong reactions. It certainly did from me. Plastic surgery to mimic the ideal Renaissance-era woman? Cool idea. But when she actually puts the project to motion, she doesn't account for the changing standards of beauty over time. Maybe that was the point. Or maybe she thought what was considered beautiful hadn't changed much from the time of Michelangelo. Whatever the cause was, the results look far from appealing. In fact, she reminds me a lot of Joker from The Dark Knight (2009).
Plastic surgery and modification to the human body has become so commonplace that it's hard to lose sight of its original purpose: reconstruction. ORLAN's performance is, at its core, cosmetic. Yet there are attempts at artistry through reconstruction. Prosthetics have served as a very active area for such creativity.
The Japanese manga Fullmetal Alchemist features prosthetics ("automail," as referred in the series) heavily. How the artificial limbs are powered was left to the imagination of the reader, but it is shown being directly connected to nerve ends on the human body. (Yet despite this automail conveniently cannot transfer pain to the wearer.)
The main protagonist, Edward Elric, wears automail to replace his lost arm and leg. These are no different from your regular prosthetics. Yet in the piece there are characters who go so far as to voluntarily give up limbs to augment themselves with high-powered automail.
Take Buccaneer here for example. How he lost his right arm isn't quite clear. What is important though is that he replaced it with a chainsaw.
Which, in some ways, is like ORLAN's appropriation of plastic surgery for artistry. It's an interesting topic to think about: does body augmentation through reconstructive surgery still lie in the realm of reconstruction, or does it cross over to some other region?
1. Standen, Camille. "South Korean Parents Are Making Their Kids Get Plastic Surgery." Vice, 14 May 2013. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/avnb7z/south-korean-parents-are-making-their-kids-get-plastic-surgery
2. ORLAN. Resurfacing: Surgery-Performance Photos and Recent Works. Curated by Erica Ando. 2 Dec. 2010.
3. The Dark Knight. Directed by Christopher Nolan, Paramount Pictures, 18 July 2008.
4. Vesna, Victoria. "Medicine pt3." YouTube, YouTube. 22 Apr. 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIX-9mXd3Y4
5. Arakawa, Hiromu. "Fullmetal Alchemist." Monthly Shōnen Gangan, Square Enix.
Let's jump over to ORLAN. Her artistry certainly is bold. It draws strong reactions. It certainly did from me. Plastic surgery to mimic the ideal Renaissance-era woman? Cool idea. But when she actually puts the project to motion, she doesn't account for the changing standards of beauty over time. Maybe that was the point. Or maybe she thought what was considered beautiful hadn't changed much from the time of Michelangelo. Whatever the cause was, the results look far from appealing. In fact, she reminds me a lot of Joker from The Dark Knight (2009).
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| Heath Ledger as the Joker, without makeup, in The Dark Knight. |
Plastic surgery and modification to the human body has become so commonplace that it's hard to lose sight of its original purpose: reconstruction. ORLAN's performance is, at its core, cosmetic. Yet there are attempts at artistry through reconstruction. Prosthetics have served as a very active area for such creativity.
The Japanese manga Fullmetal Alchemist features prosthetics ("automail," as referred in the series) heavily. How the artificial limbs are powered was left to the imagination of the reader, but it is shown being directly connected to nerve ends on the human body. (Yet despite this automail conveniently cannot transfer pain to the wearer.)
The main protagonist, Edward Elric, wears automail to replace his lost arm and leg. These are no different from your regular prosthetics. Yet in the piece there are characters who go so far as to voluntarily give up limbs to augment themselves with high-powered automail.
Which, in some ways, is like ORLAN's appropriation of plastic surgery for artistry. It's an interesting topic to think about: does body augmentation through reconstructive surgery still lie in the realm of reconstruction, or does it cross over to some other region?
1. Standen, Camille. "South Korean Parents Are Making Their Kids Get Plastic Surgery." Vice, 14 May 2013. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/avnb7z/south-korean-parents-are-making-their-kids-get-plastic-surgery
2. ORLAN. Resurfacing: Surgery-Performance Photos and Recent Works. Curated by Erica Ando. 2 Dec. 2010.
3. The Dark Knight. Directed by Christopher Nolan, Paramount Pictures, 18 July 2008.
4. Vesna, Victoria. "Medicine pt3." YouTube, YouTube. 22 Apr. 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIX-9mXd3Y4
5. Arakawa, Hiromu. "Fullmetal Alchemist." Monthly Shōnen Gangan, Square Enix.
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