Giving over some fundamental use of our body to a machine can be an extreme gesture even if it is only temporary. And if this surrender also involves our ability to voluntarily communicate, then the gesture becomes even more extreme. Nataliya Petkova’s “La Mariée Remise à Nu par le Binaire” is a performative robotic structure enabling this kind of gesture. It takes over some nodal parts of the body involved in the vocal system in order to let a machine use these to “speak”. The artist argues that the body becomes merely a “resonant box”. Indeed, the motors controlling mouth movements, the small electric shocks sent to the tongue by electronics and the artificial larynx pressed to the throat to stimulate the vocal chords, articulating generative or audio-reactive speech, all underscore this sensation. Here, Petkova outstandingly embodies deep feelings of an obstructed communication through electromechanical fears in a functional yet universal prosthetics.

 

Nataliya Petkova – La mariée mise à nu par le binaire, même I