Lilia Li-Mi-Yan & Katherina Sadovsky

Artists’ Statement About the Work

In our projects, we explore questions of the future, ecology, the relationship between humans and Nature, the possibilities of human interaction and connection with other forms of existence. What happens if we, as a species, have a new body created in interaction with new technologies, materials, bacteria? Will we be eternal, and will we remain the same people? What will happen to the emotions of the new human, posthuman, cyborg...? Will we be able to refuse to reproduce ourselves? Given the rise of medicine and biotechnology, our emotional development is frozen in the capsule of our ancestors. Today we are still hunters and gatherers. We critically analyze these issues, inconveniently intruding into nature with digital images on polymer materials, comparing this art gesture with the attitude of humanity towards non-human agents and the biosphere in general.

The characters in the A000000000001000AA011 videos are equipped with special implants and an additional organ system that allows them to survive in the modern world, where many environmental disasters have occurred. Powerful CO2 emissions into the atmosphere have led to global warming, and viruses have destroyed an ordinary biological body, forcing it to adapt to current conditions. The body of a new person, a posthuman, has learned to reproduce the critical organ systems and has also become something like a farm for growing cells and cellular organoids to create the same organs. Advances in technology and biotechnology have allowed the posthuman to survive in the most challenging conditions, reanimate the dead body and grow food with the help of innovative 3D printers and incubators. The posthuman possesses new systems of perception and feeling. For example, a system of increased empathy allows you to feel the emotional and physical state of people like him and "Inhumans". Brain mapping and emulation capabilities will enable new humans to be eternal as a neural network in digital reality or have an augmented biological body. The characters are concerned with the same questions: the rights of the posthuman, if an individual can dispose of their death, if it is possible not to die anymore, love, responsibility, the possibility of reproduction and the transmission of their genes, if there is no more male and female gender, and children can be conceived, carried, and born outside the body. We look closely and see something like tumors, cosmetic deformities, and parasitic (possibly symbiotic) collaborations with something organic. At the same time, we see that the subjects-carriers do not feel uncomfortable from such a neighborhood on their body. The posthuman escapes the lifetime of his civilization. Objectively, the nervous system's plasticity is faster than technological evolution, and yesterday's demonization of information speed is not a biological but a cultural problem.  The slow social evolution we are witnessing is politically conditioned: the current government in any country is interested in slowing down. That is why it is most willing to introduce updated protocols and security strategies today. Through them, society learns patterns leading to social stagnation.

— Lilia Li-Mi-Yan & Katherina Sadovsky