Kelly Dobson: Wearable Body Organs
Title:
- Wearable Body Organs
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Artist Statement:
The myth of self-containment is counterbalanced by the promise of fluid connectivity, enhancement and exchange. No longer exclusively private, we wear our vital organs and use them as body language. Wearable Body Organs is an organ and a tool.
Social codes and identities are implied, imposed, and played With. Wearable Body Organs are visible play-use objects-devices-equipment that both offer context-sensitive functionality for their wearers and simultaneously announce their own need for existence by being used in public without being hidden and small as is the trend with consumer gadgets and self-assisting devices – hearing aids, PDAs, artificial organs, and colostomy bags).
ScreamBody, CryBody, SleepBody, EatBody, HoldBody, FightBody, RelaxBody, HouseBody – rather than being hidden and made to go unnoticed, these “products” intend to be noticed, as this is key in their functionality – they are social-critical activists. These fashionable identity negotiators are designed as transitional objects, to be helpful in taming a feared access of energies. ScreamBody, one in the series of Wearable Body Organs, is a portable space for screaming. When a user needs to scream, but is in any number of situations where it is just not permitted, ScreamBody silences the user’s screams so they may feel free to vocalize without tear of environmental retaliation, and at the same time it records the scream for later release. Participants access sensorial energies that have been implicitly or explicitly put to sleep by enculturation.
