ABSTRACT

This article takes post-human and cybersexuality as the main perspectives from which to contextualize the Taiwanese artist Lin Pey-Chwen's (born 1959) Eve Clone series, on which she has been working since 2006. It describes how Eve Clone's virtual body of Eve expresses Lin's perceptions of the symbols and imaginings of the post-human. The latest Eve Clone series explores issues of femininity, but is also related to the religious symbolism that Lin has adapted in the creation of her work. Although using science and digitality to create art, Lin criticizes technical civilization while reclaiming the importance of nature. In Portrait of Eve Clone, the cyborg body has been created from the main technical operation of digital technology, and this adaptation of a digital body examines the discourses of both the body and sexuality. Lin's Eve Clone has created a perfect being in cyberspace through artistic aesthetics and new media technologies.

KEYWORDS

cybersexuality body cyborg post-human Eve Clone hybridity

In this article, I will explore the intersectional concepts of the post-human and cybersexuality, both of which contextualize the work of the Taiwanese artist Lin Pey-Chwen's ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) (born 1959) Eve Clone series, on which she has been working since 2006. This series of digital works is inspired by the figure of Eve, re-imagined and reconstructed by the artist as a virtual cyborg. (1) The latest work in the series, Eve Clone, continues Lin's exploration of cyber-feminism and the post-human, drawing on religious symbolism, several aspects of which have been major recurring themes in her recent work. In work dealing predominantly with sexuality and digitality, the Eve Clone series can be traced back to Lin's earlier work when she first returned to Taiwan after having studied in Australia during 1995.

THE POST-HUMAN AND ITS COMPLEXITIES

Before examining specific works, it is necessary to outline the two key themes--namely the post-human and cybersexuality. Post-human as an academic term has been debated widely since the late 1970s. Ihab Hassan's Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthuman Culture?, published in 1977, contends that technology not only influences medical science but also governs our daily consumer culture. Meanwhile, Steve Nichols's Posthuman Manifesto, published in 1988, maintains that people today are already living in a post-human condition. Related critical theories began to flourish in the West during the 1970s and 1980s, while several other familiar terms prefixed 'post-' may all be related to the philosophical aspects of the post-human, which is a notion that concerns the 'other' while also inferring a sense of undecidability (Miah 2008: 71-94). Meanwhile, Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston have described the proliferation of academic 'post-isms' as 'simultaneously the necessary or regrettable failure to imagine what's next' (1995: 2). Consequently, the phenomenon of the 'post-human' reveals a state of anxiety and uncertainty resulting from the condition of being between human and inhuman. The post-human takes the shapes of our bodies, but is a hybrid of our biological forms and technology, such as a cyborg, which according to feminist philosopher Donna Haraway...