Electricity and the Body in Public Performance

An illustrated lecture by Torino:Margolis
Date: June 15, 2010
Time: 8:00 P.M.
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
Please note: This lecture is paired with an event taking place on Tuesday, June 29; More here.

Beginning with the first known public performance by Stephen Gray in 1729 and continuing through the present, scientists and artists have been exploring electricity and the human body for hundreds of years. The innate electrical potential of the human body, electricity as a medium of destruction and using outside electricity to manipulate the body have been served as conceptual fodder throughout this rich history. Although the collaboration between the arts and sciences may seem recent, due to its popularization in the media and 20th century art movements such as Bioart, the connection between these two groups have existed for centuries. Benjamin Margolis, MD and Jenny Torino, MS, RD current tinkerers in both worlds, will take you through the history of public performances in this arena and discuss how it relates to their own work using invasive electronics and the body.

Torino:Margolis is a performance art team that smashes through physical and psychological barriers separating one body from another using invasive electronics and biomedical tools. They explore the idea
that the self is transient, elusive and modular by playing with the notion of control and free will. Their extraction of physiological processes concretizes these concepts and presents them as questions to the
viewer — not to illustrate the mechanism, but to explore the experience. The team has performed nationally and internationally at New York venues such as Issue Project Room, POSTMASTERS Gallery and Exit Art, the HIVE Gallery in California, and the Bergen Kunsthall Museum in Norway. They have lectured for institutions such as SUNY Stony Brook and the School of Visual Arts. For more information please see www.torinomargolis.com.

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