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from: The mutated body
Written by Jorinde Seijdel in a
Montevideo/TBA publication,1998 Peter Bogers' Apart(1996) shows
images of isolated parts of the body on four screens, placed next to each
other. From left to right, we see a clenched fist, a head seen from above, an
open hand, and a bare foot, seen from below - these are scanned video stills
moving in a loop. The organs are floating freely in the image, and show
various revolving, vibrating or punching rhythms of motion: the fist, for
example, draws back and then strikes out powerfully, while the head is
turning around, and the other hand and the foot are moving backwards. In this
constant acceleration, the body parts eventually run amok. Captured in
isolation, they seem to want to escape their predicament, without actually
being able to break free from, or come closer to, each other - as they were
controlled from within, but by a force outside themselves. What, then, is the identity and
ideology of Bogers' disintegrated, mutated and alienated bodies? What is
their context and deeper truth? At face value, they are devoid of any kind of
hierarchy, of a central point, which gives them coherence and unity. The
organs, which seem to be in an embryonic state of weightlessness, are also
restrained, held in quarantine, by the hardware and software of the technology with which
they are represented; it is precisely this technology which defines their
context, identity and truth. Technology is not merely used as a presentation
model, instrument, medium or shell, but rather, is part of the content. Bogers' bodies seem to be possessed
by an alien bodily order, which has taken hold of them internally. They are
following a logic, which has nothing to do with us. They do not control
technology, but rather, it controls them, mutates them internally. The
traditional rift between body and technology seems to have been eradicated, to make
place for a hybrid fusion. Bogers' bodies are no longer superior to
technology and matter, but rather, are completely absorbed by them. They are
an ecstatic representation of the ongoing mutilation of the body. This is
alarming, but only if considered from the traditional idea of the pure
controlling and controlled body. Now that the body is becoming more
and more contaminated, not only by external, but also by internal
(bio)technological prostheses and genetic manipulation, now that there are
dreams of cultivating parts of bodies and bodies without heads, the fusion of
body and technology is no longer a nightmare or science fiction, rather, it
has become reality. Bogers shows the body in a precarious position, but
without provoking a nostalgic yearning for 'the times when all was as it
should be' -of course, we now know that such times never existed, but were
only invented in retrospect. Rather, Bogers' work represents a courageous
spirit of survival, and attempts to let go of the old and familiar, in favour
of the strangeness and uncertainty of the metamorphosis. The metamorphosis of the world Bogers' installations can also be
regarded as attempts to make the fundamental chasm between the inner and the
outside world, between subject and object, between image/representation and
reality, visible and tangible. Bogers emphatically shows the confinement of
the images within the order governing the representation, a strange,
introverted order, which does not belong to ordinary reality. Everything
looks so miss-happen and strange that you are forced into reflection on the
status of both worlds, the ordinary world and the one represented. It is as
if the manifestations in Bogers' work were in a different dimension, with a
different gravity and different laws of space and time. Considered from the
sphere of the normal and conventional, it is governed by total disintegration
and fragmentation, and you are the observer of alienating, introverted,
rituals. There are barely answers to the whys and wherefores, on the
contrary, questions are raised. There are no coordinating, narrative,
contexts: the images mainly relate to themselves and to each other. |