‘Reproducing the Body: The Manufactured Human in the Twenty-first Century’

– Peter Boxall (University of Sussex) Professor of English.

This paper looks at a range of contemporary art works which represent the manufactured, prostheticised body, from Orlan’s performance art and Patricia Piccinini’s sculpture to Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go. It asks how changes to the way that we reproduce embodied life impact upon our conception of the human, and what the role of the contemporary imagination is in responding to such transformations.

Recorded 16th Apr 2013