An interview with Paul Virilio
Paul Virilio is one of the most influential European theorists currently discussing contemporary media, and is the subject of the recent Sage Press anthology, Paul Virilio: From Modernism to Hypermodernism and Beyond. In the following interview he discusses his increasing dismay before escalating 'hyperviolence and hypersexuality'
Nicholas Zurbrugg Towards the end of La bombe informatique you point to the paradoxical way in which successful fashion models are both very beautiful and very silent. If 'top models' now replace film stars, it's allegedly 'Because they don't speak! ' . Clinton's abbreviated and accelerated pre-election television statements, you suggest, similarly reflected this ' silent revolution' .
Paul Virilio They were usually just ninety seconds- ninety seconds!
NZ Viewed in this context, the French body artist Orlan is perhaps most interesting in terms of her subversion of these conventions. She challenges dominant standards of beauty by manipulating her facial appearance in satellite-broadcast surgical operation performances and systematically accompanies her exhibitions with public lectures or ' conferences' in order to guarantee discussion of her ideas, rapidly scandalizing audiences with unbearable video images and then instigating sustained debate. But I suspect you may have less enthusiastic reactions to her performances.
PV Orlan has a real body which she transforms into a virtual body by means of different multimedia, and I think there's now a kind of multimedia academy. When I write about 'pitiful academic art', it's because televisual art seems to have become an academic art with particular standards, rules, mannerisms and uniformities of presentation. For me the 'body art' of Orlan and other artists- and here, I'm not talking about the Australian artist Stelarc---contributes to the way in which the real body, and its... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline