parasight
operating table, Nicosia, CY, 2021 -
project author: parasight - George Themistokleous; software engineer: Savvas Socratous
The Operating Table, is a custom-made moveable device that attaches onto Nicosia’s barrels that run along the border. Responding to the border division in Cyprus, the operating table uses a photographic apparatus to re-construct the imagery along Nicosia’s Buffer Zone. The apparatus, by automatically capturing and re-producing imagery of participants stitched to their contextual background through compositing techniques, creates hybrid combinations between human and nonhuman agents. Through this live ‘imaging’ method, the postcolonial dominant binary identities of Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots that are predominant today are problematised. Taking its cue from the post colonial aspiration of becoming ‘Linobambakoi,’ - a ‘lost’ Cypriot minority, the re-duplicated image-identities produced via the ‘operating table’ exceed any “representations that fit within an established political discourse.” The linobambakoi, “remain faithful to the secret that their identity exceeds imperial categories and limits” (Constantinou, 2007). In the operating table the photographic apparatus, and its automation responds to the border condition, whilst its “process remains concealed: a black box” (Flusser 2018, 16) from the mechanism of surveillance. The visitor’s body becomes an object in a shifting field of vegetation, dilapidated buildings, cats, clouds and so on. For a few seconds, one loses their orientation, as the image uproots oneself from their surroundings, and from any prescribed identities. By producing an ‘out of body’ experience, one’s ‘national’ identity is, at least momentarily, contested. The table as surface “where texts had been written by men or inspired by God – never inspired or written by nonhumans” (Latour 1993, 23), is here subverted. Nonhuman technologies undercut the traditional role of the table.
project author: parasight - George Themistokleous; software engineer: Savvas Socratous
The Operating Table, is a custom-made moveable device that attaches onto Nicosia’s barrels that run along the border. Responding to the border division in Cyprus, the operating table uses a photographic apparatus to re-construct the imagery along Nicosia’s Buffer Zone. The apparatus, by automatically capturing and re-producing imagery of participants stitched to their contextual background through compositing techniques, creates hybrid combinations between human and nonhuman agents. Through this live ‘imaging’ method, the postcolonial dominant binary identities of Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots that are predominant today are problematised. Taking its cue from the post colonial aspiration of becoming ‘Linobambakoi,’ - a ‘lost’ Cypriot minority, the re-duplicated image-identities produced via the ‘operating table’ exceed any “representations that fit within an established political discourse.” The linobambakoi, “remain faithful to the secret that their identity exceeds imperial categories and limits” (Constantinou, 2007). In the operating table the photographic apparatus, and its automation responds to the border condition, whilst its “process remains concealed: a black box” (Flusser 2018, 16) from the mechanism of surveillance. The visitor’s body becomes an object in a shifting field of vegetation, dilapidated buildings, cats, clouds and so on. For a few seconds, one loses their orientation, as the image uproots oneself from their surroundings, and from any prescribed identities. By producing an ‘out of body’ experience, one’s ‘national’ identity is, at least momentarily, contested. The table as surface “where texts had been written by men or inspired by God – never inspired or written by nonhumans” (Latour 1993, 23), is here subverted. Nonhuman technologies undercut the traditional role of the table.