GAME GRRRL
22 September – 30 October 1994
Political theory and practice have for some years focused on the cultural and social factors involved in what is considered as a person. Culture and social affairs regulate not only the social possibilities of a person, but also what is considered "personal" - gender, body and behavior. The idea of being understood as a cultural sample makes artificial applications such as fashion, make-up and other forms of self-staging attractive: they counter the notion of a "natural" person and personality (and thus a predetermined life path).
This is the starting point for an argument - for example, Jeffrey Deitch in the catalog of the Hamburg exhibition "Posthuman" (1993) - biotechnology and genetic engineering give us the tools to perfect self-styling ("it will be normal to reinvent oneself"). The GAME GRRRL project focused on the claim that surgery and genetic engineering are similar to make-up and clothing: what (scientific) image of the human body makes such assumptions possible?
picture credits:
GAME GRRRL, 1994. Installation views Kunstverein München e.V., 1994. Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V., photographs by: Wilfried Petzi