In view of the present trend towards the hyperreality of digital spaces, the Australian artist Melinda Rackham is a positive phenomenon: her Net-based works, in which she creates zones that seem strange and abstract, apparently detached from reality, are fantasies and models of identity and subjectivity in networked space. She has won various prizes over the past few years, such as the Stuttgart Filmwinter prize 2001 for her 3D multi-user environment »empyrean« and the Leonardo New Horizons Award 2000 for »[carrier].«

In early fantasies about cyberspace at the start of the nineties, the discussion was always centered around the theme of disembodiment. Melinda Rackham\'s works take up a different perspective: they are less about the disappearance of the body and the victory of mind over matter than about new forms of physicalization, albeit ones that go far beyond conventional images of body and subject. Instead, we encounter »lower« forms of life, abstract, disintegrated or fragmented entities and spaces that vaguely call to mind something like nanoentities, cellular beings and planets.

The work-in-progress project »empyrean,« which exists in various versions as a single or multi-user work, is made up of seven different zones of space or quality, called »scapes« or »e_scapes,« which can each be logged in to. Their names, which are pregnant with meaning - void, order, beauty, truth, strange, chaos, charm - correspond to the way particles are named in quantum physics. One could say that these electronic landscapes (which double as »e_scapes« in the sense of »getting away«) translate physical feelings and emotions into the language of digital codes, and spatialize them. Each of the zones is differently constructed, and is made up of subzones or secondary zones; for example, in the »beauty« zone, lines and rays move rhythmically, evoking a sort of labyrinth or deep structure that cannot however be penetrated, because it has neither an interior nor an exterior. Something similar happens when »truth« is visited. Here, a sort of blackish red planet, when explored in depth, turns into a blood cell, then into a heart, which the users can move about in, but not enter. Sentences like »They want to know,« »Data is active,« »Matrix is active« float about , but deny answers to the question of what bodies and genders could be in play here. Sometimes sentences crop up like »I am the goddess,« which fairly unambiguously denotes a female agent. Among the avatars, which look like phosphorescent stones or globes, thus excluding any reference to human qualities, there is, besides Pickles, Symborg and Quincy, a Miss Fluffy. This refers to something feminine, without exactly coinciding with the image of a woman. The communication ability of the avatars is still very limited: they can »squeeze« or »blush,« and users can only converse in normal language in the chat window.

The enchanting effect made by Rackham\'s utopian »empyrean« - the word refers to the medieval concept of the heavenly vault above the earth - results from the flowing aesthetics and imagery that inform the whole: »soft-skinned e_scapes,« »hungry voids.« Everything is in a state of permanent transformation and indeterminacy - a softness and physicality that however does not suggest any particular bodies. Instead, what is shown moves above or below this threshold of signification. However, because these flowing esthetics refer back to basic fantasies of femininity, and because this moment is reinforced by the gender-specific names of some of the agents (words like goddess or Miss Fluffy have no male counterparts), it is hard to rid oneself of the impression that the »empyrean« is indeterminately female.¹ I must leave it open whether this has to do with the familiar notion of femininity as a utopian, fluid entity, or whether this idea is played with in order to specifically address women as agents.

[b]Being a carrier[/b]

The body as a dynamic flow of information, as a molecule, a virus, an intelligent agent, as a fluid gender outside the gender dichotomy, but one that nonetheless seems to tend towards being feminine - this is also the concept of body and subject that Melinda Rackham presents in »[carrier],« a Net work created in 1999. The virus is called »sHe,« i.e. it is a being that is both genders at once and yet possibly more universally feminine, because the »s« that denotes femininity is contained in the word »sHe« and pronounced, while the capital »H« remains silent. The fact that it tends towards a »she« is also shown in the feminine personal pronouns that follow, such as »her swarming consciousness.«

Rackham is, one learns, a carrier of the Hepatitis C virus, thus someone who is generally seen to be infected with a foreign body. In »[carrier],« the virus is an intelligent agent that gives the users a welcoming embrace and guides them, speaking gently, erotically, through the Web site. The infection is presented as a moment of desire, of merging with the Other; a body and identity transfer takes place in which one takes up the position of a »sick« person. In other words, a moment of decline and decay is implied, even though it appears as an act of love and beauty: becoming a virus, becoming sick, becoming multiple.

On this journey, you encounter modified models of viral symbiosis that lead into the inner sphere of immunology. You can click onto e-mail reports by other infected people who tell of their daily experiences, limitations and fears. In the process, a strangely paradoxical state is achieved, opening up between the amorous discourse with the virus, the enchantingly fluid pictures, and the shattering testimonials of people who are affected. Asking questions like: What does it mean being a carrier? What does it mean to enter into a symbiosis with something that is part of you and simultaneously works against you, against your molecules? In contrast to conventional depictions of the infected body as a battlefield and of the virus as a hostile attacker, it becomes evident in »[carrier]« that the body you supposedly »own« has always been open and full of foreign bodies: in other words, not a fixed entity, but a mutating, communicating stream of data. Here, being ill means intensely experiencing this openness, mutation, dependence and processual nature of the body and one\'s own body identity; it means accepting this state of becoming as something alive, allowing oneself to be embraced, and finding pleasure in being »marked.«

The significance accorded to this »marking« in its turn refers to the significance of difference and belonging, and thus also to the gender difference as a basic category for existential being. Both in »[carrier]« and in »empyrean,« gender dualism is resolved, but not the question of differences and gender. One even gains the impression that feminine beings have privileged access to new forms of a desubjectivized, »low« existence, in which subject and molecule, matrix and body, can approach one another.

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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