What would a future in which you could charge a phone with your heart look like?
Home-grown contemporary dance company Raw Moves looks at transhumanism and artificial body parts in Being, And Organs, an experimental "research and design" work that runs from Thursday until Saturday.
The 75-minute work is conceptualised by Taiwanese artist Paul Gong, 30, whose work involves speculating about the future of humans and machines, and how they might meld.
This is the latest chapter of his work, which has featured different body parts in various locations.
In Taiwan, he focused on armpit hair; in South Korea, the appendix. In Singapore, it will be the heart.
"If we see the body as a machine, the heart is the engine or motor that powers it up," he says.
He wants to explore the notion of the "currency heart", an organ that is self-sustainable and produces its own energy.
The performers imbued the work with their own opinions of transhumanism.
Matthew Goh, 26, embraces the concept. "I want to find the human-ness in transhumanism. I believe that through it, we can be more connected with human society."
In one of the work's "experiments", Goh invites audience members to sit across from him at a table and "charge" their phone by sustaining unbroken eye contact with him.
It is a process for which he has to emotionally prepare himself. "It can go from calming to unsettling. It's a roller-coaster ride."
His fellow dancer Pichmutta Puangtongdee, 23, who goes by the moniker Dada, has her doubts about incorporating technology into the human body, which she fears will threaten what makes one human.
BOOK IT /BEING, AND ORGANS
WHERE: Multi-Purpose Studio 1 and 2, Block O, Goodman Arts Centre, 90 Goodman Road
WHEN: Thursday, 8pm; Friday and Saturday, 3 and 8pm. Friday's 3pm show is sold out
ADMISSION: $28, $25 (concession) from beingandorgans.peatix.com. For more details, e-mail [email protected]
INFO: www.rawmoves.net
To depict her uneasy navigation between humanity and technology, she balances on two exercise balls, her body stretching and twisting as she tries to keep herself atop the rolling balls.
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