POST HUMAN EXHIBIT CATALOG ESSAY 1992-93 Jeffrey Deitch

On most peoples beauty scale, Stacey Stetler would be a 10. A blond, blue-eyed, 5-foot-11 New York model, she has confidently sashayed down the runway for Yves Saint Laurent in Paris and has graced the covers of fashion magazines. But until recently, when Ms. Stetler looked in the mirror she saw less perfection and more flaws. "I was flat-chested," Ms. StetIer said. "You couldnt tell if I was coming or going. My back protruded almost as much as my front." Ms. Stetler enhanced her boyish figure by having breast implants. She is not alone.

The New York Times, 6 February 1992, front page

Stories about breast implants, crash diets, and mood drugs have moved from the health and beauty page to the front page. The public has been galvanized by explosive testimony about sexual harassment and by the sensational rape trials of public figures. Questions about the new boundaries of appropriate interpersonal behavior are attracting unprecedented interest. There is a growing sense that we should take control over our bodies and our social circumstances rather than just accepting what we inherited.

Social and scientific trends are converging to shape a new conception of the self, a new construction of what it means to be a human being. The matter-of-fact acceptance of ones "natural" looks and ones "natural" personality is being replaced by a growing sense that it is normal to reinvent oneself. The Freudian model of the "psychological person" is dissolving into a new model that encourages individuals to dispense with the anguished analysis of how subconscious childhood experiences molded their behavior. There is a new sense that one can simply construct the new self that one wants, freed from the constraints of ones past and ones inherited genetic code.

Human evolution may be entering a new phase that Charles Darwin never would have envisioned. The potential of genetic reconstitution may be quickly propelling us beyond Darwinian natural evolution and into a bold realm of artificial evolution. Our society will soon have access to the biotechnology that will allow us to make direct choices about how we want our species to further evolve. This new techno-evolutionary phase will bring us far beyond eugenics. Our childrens generation could very well be the last generation of "pure" humans.

This new sense of ones power to control and, if desired, reconstruct ones body has quickly developed a broad acceptance1 but there is still a significant segment of society that is deeply disturbed by its implications. The bitter debate over abortion rights is an example of how explosive the controversy over the limits of "natural" life will become. The battle over the abortion issue and the outcry over euthanasia and the right to choose suicide may be just the beginning of an enormous social conflict over ones freedom to use the new biotechnology to take greater control over ones body and to enhance the course of ones life.

The issue of using genetic engineering to "improve" the fetus will potentially become much more highly charged than the controversy over abortion. It may not be an exaggeration to say that it will become the most difficult moral and social issue that the human species has ever faced. Genetic engineering is not just another life-enhancing technology like aviation or telecommunications. Its continued development and application may force us to redefine the parameters of life.

Our consciousness of the self will have to undergo a profound change as we continue to embrace the transforming advances in biological and communications technologies. A of the self will inevitably take hold as ever more powerful body-altering techniques become commonplace. As radical plastic surgery computer-chip brain implants and gene-splicing become routine, the former structure of self will no longer correspond to the new structure of the body. A new post-human organization of personality will develop that reflects peoples adaptation to this new technology and its socioeconomic effects.

New approaches to self-realization are generally paralleled by new approaches to art. With each successive transformation of the social environment, great artists have both reflected and helped to define the new personality models that have developed out of societys absorption of technological, political, and social change. Looking back through the history of art, we can see how artists have portrayed the changes in models of self-realization that have accompanied profound changes in the social environment.

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POST HUMAN EXHIBIT CATALOG ESSAY 1992-93 Jeffrey Deitch