Bruno Ricard: Life

[anna balint]

Bruno Ricard : Life ®
http://www.simcast.net

Franklin Furnace is proud to present BRUNO RICARD’s web project “Life
®.”  Bruno Ricard was an artist in residence in Franklin Furnace’s series
THE FUTURE OF THE PRESENT 2001, hosted by Parsons School of Design, Digital
Design Department.

http://www.simcast.net

Life ® is a web site project which deals with the pancapitalist management
of the body and the biomass in the first world and third world.

In the economies of excess, the flesh machine is not yet technologically
capable of genetically engineering the perfect body, free of disease, decay
and aesthetic flaws, so this central goal of pancapitalist power vectors
needs to be realized in another way. And the chosen set of tools used here
to "normalize" the presentation of the body (which should match the perfect
body extensively branded in the spectacle) are increasing medicalization,
use of drugs, plastic surgery and fitness programs.

On the other end, in the economy of shortage endemic to third world
countries, the body is sick, decaying, and constantly on the verge of
dying; it's an impoverished body because of economic underdevelopment. And
it's a state which pancapitalism -with its mixture of globalism and free
trade, forcing national and local economies to restructure to better serve
the interest of transnational corporations- is not about to improve. On the
contrary, as one can witness especially with biotech industry, the only
goal here is again, in a post-colonial gesture, to further divert, exploit
and harvest natural resources from their legitimate owners. Biopiracy or
the ransom of national biodiversity through heavy patenting by Western
corporations (whether it be human/animal/vegetal genes or components);
hijacking of local agriculture by seeds/pesticides western corporations and
their inadequate products (leading to an increasing rate of suicides or
to  organs trafficking) these are a few examples of the effects of
the  imperative of control and profit of pancapitalism.

FRANKLIN FURNACE ARCHIVE, INC. <http://www.franklinfurnace.org> in its 25th
Anniversary year, presents THE FUTURE OF THE PRESENT 2001.

Since 1997, Franklin Furnace’s virtual programs have been made possible by
the faith and foresight of Jerome Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, the
Heathcote Art Foundation, The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science,
and Technology, the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the
New York State Council on the Arts’ Technology Initiative, and The Andy
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc.