Artist Jack Brindley with curator Tim Dixon are 'Open File'. The curatorial duo present a line-up of new and established artists at the ICA in the first of a triptych of performances and screenings. The events reflect what it is to curate in an increasingly virtual age and in a time where 'digitalization and the virtualisation of space implies a crucial shift where the human scale of industry and society have disappeared, and therefore social products are no longer manipulated totally materially'. Linking the argument to the human body, evolution of human interaction, design and object function, 'Long Live the New Flesh' poses questions about the boundaries and confluence between body and technology. Benedict Drew and John Gerrard feature in the one off event that brings together emerging and established practitioners in an evening of live bodies and digital image.

Here David Burrows from collective Plastique Fantastique answers some questions on 'the new flesh' and their performance that will 'summon the Neuropatheme'...

Dazed Digital: 
Are there any references that specifically tie in?
David Burrows: Texts, YouTube films, references include the ideas of Thomas Metzinger, a philosopher who has been working with neuroscientists and who wrote the ‘Ego Tunnel’. Metzinger argues thatno one has ever been a selfand suggests that this concept and the counter-intuitive discoveries of neuroscience will be difficult for people to accept but that the technologies produced as a result of these discoveries will effect everyday life and culture. As well as this we have been thinking about Norbert Weiner and his ideas about feedback loops, Scot Bakker’s novelNeuropathand other writing, Ray Brassier’s text on noise and genre, the animated film seriesghost in the shell, the propaganda of the virtual Buddhist terrorists and various myths of the extreme past and future.

DD: 
How would you describe the current human relationship to technology?
David Burrows: The nature of these relationships can only be guessed at. The development of various technologies will be seen as an evolutionary process in the future. Evolution can be thought of as realising many potential forms or organisations. In this, both chance and contingency may be involved in evolution. Most potential forms remain virtual, only some become actual.

If someone’s phone rings or pings and you reach to check your own phone, or you sense a vibration and think you have received a text but discover none has been sent or you check your phone when you see others doing so, your body has already been prepared for the next evolutionary stage.

As well as this, in the past, the relation of technology and humans has been understood through metaphors, fiction, images and myth, all of which can have an effect of the development of different technologies and everyday life. This is true today (an example being The Cloud) and will be so in the future.

DD: How does your work address this?
David Burrows: The work is a mytheme (or mysteme) for Neuropatheme (aka subject-without-experience, fux-the-shadow, otalP-the-empty-cave). Neuropatheme processes affects as information. Neuropatheme when fully plugged in realises that Neuropatheme is a sequence of processes and connections (exactly the same as being unplugged). Neuropatheme, feeling everything and nothing, is free of having to produce meaning and experiments with producing different feedback loops.


DD: 
How has thinking, theory and practice developed to address emergent technologies?
David Burrows: In diverse ways but always in part as imaginary, fiction or myth.


DD: 
How do you think art and the art world is adapting?
David Burrows: In the 60s and 70s, artists now called conceptual artists or associated with expanded art practice or expanded cinema where seen as radical but today they might be seen as pioneers and promoters of new and relatively available technology (fax machines, video, cheap air flights, Xerox, telephones, TV monitors) which transformed the world, commerce, leisure and culture. In the future, the same observation will probably be made about many of today’s artists.



DD: Most prescient and predictive artist/writer?
David Burrows: Nick Land and Sadie Plant

DD: 

What are the dangers with our current mode of technological interaction?
David Burrows: Narcissism



“Is this a fashion show or a funeral?” someone whispered into my ear on the first day of shows. But surprisingly, by the last day of LC:M a new kind of darkness emerged on the runway when designers sent out their own unusual breed of monsters and vampires. Of course there was a twist -Katie Eary's vampires weren’t concealed in black but rather covered in fuchsia flower prints, whilst Shaun Samson's monsters looked as though they had been taken from an American ice hockey team.

“Horror is something I am constantly obsessed with,” screamed Katie Eary backstage as her fang-wearing models walked past her. “I started by looking at eighteenth century paintings of banquets,” she continued. “I was looking at the food actually and then I thought what if there were bodies amongst it – this idea of eighteenth century gore.” This season, her prints did have an almost gore-like quality to them, particularly in the way her images were layered over each other. Flowers and lobsters were digitally manipulated in deep pinks, blacks and blues – translating the painterly quality of the eighteenth century images she referenced. Models appeared wearing gold chocker neck pieces and pointy fangs, allowing Eary to craft her own hybrid of streetwear vampire.

Christopher Kane also paid homage to the icons of horror in his menswear presentation. Dracula and Frankenstein both appeared on printed t-shirts and on velvet slippers, whilst his moody colour palette of midnight blues, blacks and deep purples were an nod to the darkness genre itself. Kane's use of fur took reference from werewolves and appeared on shirt collars and evening jackets.

For Shaun Samson, fur was also used as a reference to monsters in his streetwear-heavy collection. Models entered the runway wearing shabby fur earmuffs and ice hockey jumpers - Samson calling them his own “ice monsters.” Backstage, he claimed another important reference this season was camping - “For some reason, I always think that when you go camping you feel like you're in your pyjamas. There are monsters out in the woods and the only way you can protect yourself from the monsters is to say a prayer to God.”

Although Matthew Miller didn't claim that vampires or monsters were on his mind when designing his autumn / winter 13' collection, there was certainly a moody element this season. On the runway, his models appeared in uniform. Each with two of their fingers painted red, something Miller claimed was “a reference to anarchism,” but could have been taken from a modern horror film. The slogan 'Born to Fail' was printed in red on his garments, his “response to being fucked over by Generation X.”

Al Smith is a formidably talented young dramatist, writer and director. Smith founded his own production company,Kandinsky, dedicated to investigating the links between theatre and sciencein 2005.Smith has already won a number of awards and seen his plays performed at theatres both in London and New York, but more recently the young writer has been backed by the BBC with his plays commissioned for BBC Radio 4. He recently was awarded the Wellcome Trust's Screenwriting Prize, and his latest script, David Attenborough's Africa, is currently viewable on iPlayer.Al Smith is apioneering british talent andinspired byConverse Boots' Yescampaign, we asked Al what he sees as an important moment in his career so far.

Al Smith: I've had a lot of help and support - I'd not have got anywhere alone. If I had to pick one moment, I'd pick the "yes" from the judges on the Wellcome Trust Screenwriting Prize. It's a film prize dedicated to supporting writers who tell stories with a scientific bent. Nearly all of my plays for theatre have revolved around scientific ideas and I've always loved the cinema, so to win a supported opportunity to mix the two is a big deal for me.It's tough to know what specific choices have value - I guess I just try to make the best choice with whatever's in front of me at the time. Maybe this is either too obvious or ambiguous, but I do remember consciously choosing to read more scripts rather than just going to the theatre. I'm seeing two or three plays a week, but you never get closer to learning about the choices writers make than when you get stuck into their scripts. Trying to get to grips with the craft of writing seems invaluable to me. An individual whose support started to open doors for me was,without hesitation, John Yorke at BBC Drama. He was at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005 and came to see the first play I wrote, "Enola". Off the back of that play he offered me a place on the BBC Writers Academy. I cut my teeth on those shows and got my break as a working writer. So him. He opened the first door.

Photography Bafic