UNDERSTANDING POST-HUMANISM WITH IVANA BAšIć
INTERVIEWED BY ABRAXASS Intro Valentivo RivaPicture courtesy of Ivana Bašić
Ivana Bašić is a Serbian (Yugoslavian-born) artist based in New York. Through the use of glass, metal, and wax she proposes a new representation of the human-non-human figure in a post-anthropocentric perspective, questioning our views about the fragility of flesh during a transitional state, proposing a research for an Ulterior as an alternative to the tragedy of the human condition.
Abraxass is an Italian digital-collagist currently based in Milan and he mediated for us with Ivana Bašić in an effort to dissect some themes at the core of her artistic production, such as spirituality, disembodiment, and technology, helping us understand how we can approach them trough trans-humanistic perspective.
ABRAXASS: It seems that the organisms and apparatuses represented by
your works live in the expectation of a break unveiling, perhaps of care and attention, sometimes
they present themselves as fragile creatures or abandoned instruments in need of protection or activation.
Is there an echo or a call that demands a relationship in what you represent?
IVANA: Most of my pieces have a yearning within them, to go back into the immaterial, into the formless state. They carry the awareness of temporality and inherent fragility of the material world that they themselves are a part of and are passing through different states of transformation in order to free themselves of the materiality and all of its constraints.
ABRAXASS: Next to and inextricably connected to this aspect of fragility and tension
toward the other seems to coexista certain “lethality” within
your creations, forms that resemble blades, spines.
Do you think that somehow this dual aspect need for openness to the other but also
for defense is related to your personal experience of dramatic events?
IVANA: Growing up during the collapse of Yugoslavia meant living through a loss that was both ideological, spiritual, and physical. I think this loss is very much present in my work. There is a lot of care, and a lot of tenderness in my pieces, but also a lot of violence inflicted upon the figures. Being exposed to violence and brutality so early on made visible the fragility of life, and our dependence on the material condition, our flesh and our blood. Amid so much instability and destruction, what becomes clear is that humans are forced to endure the fate of living in matter, even though we are not just matter.
This is something that I had, and still have a hard time coping with, and it is ultimately what I am doing through my work. Trying to find the way beyond. Speculating on the ways in which the reduction or dissolution of the body is not a loss, but a moment of radical potential.
ABRAXASS: Often the term post-humanism is approached to your works
mainly because of the synergy and interaction between elements that we might call
natural/organic and others artificial/technological, what do you think of this distinction? Is it real?
What is nature for you and what do you think is the ideal
approach that humans should have towards it?
IVANA: When we talk about post-humanism, and trans-humanism what we are really saying is that the human has the capacity to contain more than the human – to contain the Other. If we consider this through the words of B. Berenson ”A complete life may be one ending with such a full identification with non – self that there is no self to die”. – what he is saying is that transformation into otherness can be considered as a potential path to immortality. So perhaps human is not the end but the beginning – a place of potential, which also opens up possibility for rethinking the corporeal condition as the only human condition.
Therefore it may be that human is exactly achieved in its own disappearance – in becoming the nonhuman, post human, trans-human. What I am doing through my work is allowing otherness to seep into the human through the form.
ABRAXASS: If we break away from the purely corporeal realm
and move into that of identity, consciousness and memory, what kind
of developments at the level of interaction with technology do you imagine in the future?
IVANA: My work speaks of a body – any body – embodiment in general as the limitation. And even though the alternative initially appears as the surreal path, it is not, since the desire for disembodiment is very human, it is all present and acute, and we can see it exploited very plastically through current technologies, which are feeding off of this desire – offering disembodied presence, in exchange for labor.
I think technology is the dark extension of capitalism, it has become a dark crutch that is feeding off of our desires and needs and creating currency out of everything both material and immaterial so I don’t really see technology helping in any way. At the end of the day we are all created with everything we need in order to commune with the sublime.
ABRAXASS: Imagining that humanity manages to find a way to make itself immortal, do you think
this would somehow solve the problem of deathas an idea and the afterlife
from a philosophical/exitential point of view as well?
Do you think that there would remain in consciousness an awareness of another,
unknown reality toward which, perhaps, paradoxically we feel called?
IVANA: I have a very hard time imagining the classical idea of immortality as a sort of indefinite life extension – life as it is now – ever happening. I think that we are not equipped to function within time in this way – or more precisely, without time. Humans are not made to bear continuity, and immortality would be nothing but continuity. With this in mind I think that a human which could bear immortality would be a very different kind of human from what we are now, and with that in mind immortality would probably be nothing like the eternal embodied life we envision now. I think that we live our lives with the underlying awareness and yearning toward the immaterial – the state that is our original condition. We come from the immaterial which is boundless and eternal and we dress ourselves into these temporal bodies, these finite forms and the moment we do, we start our walk back toward the immaterial. I think we carry within ourselves awareness of the freedom and limitlessness from the ethereal realm and I think this is why most humans also experience life and materiality as a series of constraints and limitations with the ever present sense of “lack”.
ABRAXASS: In this perspective, what role would art play once the problem of death is “solved”?
IVANA: I am not sure that death in general is something to be “solved”. Temporality of our bodies is at the core of human condition so If we are talking about the world without death, we are talking about the non-human world. The inevitability of death and dissolution are the underlying conditions that make the world and everything in it go around and they create value in everything we do, as the time we have is limited. Art being one of the ways in which humans cope with and process reality is therefore also tied to these conditions and doesn’t really translate into a world in which they don’t exist.
ABRAXASS: To conclude, taking into account the care and manual effort
you put into the making of your works, what role does Time play for you in making art?
Does it affect its value in your opinion?
How do you think our approach to this dimension is changing
and how will it change again thanks to technology?
IVANA: For me the process of creating a piece is not merely about making its physical manifestation – but about connecting to the forces larger than myself. So time is incredibly important as the sculpting process becomes something of a meditation, or dwelling. The artwork that comes out is not the end goal in itself but a record of the journey that occurred in this space. With that in mind, speeding up the actual production process through technology is not really the point. My sculptures are neither virtually rendered nor computer-assisted. Instead, they are painstakingly formed through intricate manual techniques. I form all elements in clay by hand, and the humanoid, insect, and other forms are drawn out through feel and intuition. So there is alot if intimacy with the work throughout the whole process.
I think you can always tell when you stand in front of the piece what went into it – how much force and will and care it took for it to exist and how much proximity the artist had to its work.
For me the value of the work come from the capacity of the artist to dissolve their own ego and channel something larger than themself into the work and this requires time. In terms of tools I guess it comes down to each artist picking which tools they want to use to do that.
Abraxass ( Davide Fossati ) is a Milan-based digital artist and art director.
His work focuses on creating unsettling textures and patterns through digital collage, often blending themes like nature, bodies, death, violence, and sex.
His art has been featured in publications such as King Kong Magazine, ID-Vice, Lampoon, Coeval Magazine, and Pornceptual. He has collaborated with fashion brands, music groups, visual artists, and performers, and has explored video art, fashion design, and art direction.
His works have been exhibited in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, and are collected across Europe, the USA, and Canada.
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