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Trans(who?)man is a sound poetry performance with theoretical interpolations by Zuzana Husárová and Olga Pek

Trans(who?)man:
The piece intertwines electronic sound poetry by Zuzana Husárová (ranging from the inhumanely mechanic to sensual) and theoretical prose passages by Olga Pek. Eroding the distinction between poetic and scientific language, it at once offers a rich visceral experience and a re-evaluation of the transhumanist movement from a feminist perspective.

Reading and writing through Nietzsche's concept of the "overman," Fukuyama's reworking of Nietzsche's notion of the "last man," the "Transumanist Declaration" and Arthur C. Clarke's dictum that "[a]ny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," it problematizes the technooptimism and patriarchal implications inherent to the notion of the "man of the future" to prove it, in fact, a projection of the contemporary.

Zuzana Husárová (1983) is a postdoc scholar and author in the field of electronic literature, working as a researcher and lecturer at Comenius University (SR) in Bratislava and Masaryk University (CZ) in Brno.

She is the author of experimental literature across various media, has created sound poetry, interactive digital poetry, poetic performances and transmedia poetry.

She has collaborated with Lubomír Panák on interactive literary pieces (with the use of Kinect: Enter: in' Wodies, I: *ttter, Android application Obvia Gaude, digital literature BA-Tale, Pulse).

She has co-authored with Amalia Roxana Filip transmedia projects liminal and lucent 2012-2014 (visual poetry books, sound poetry and live performances www.liminal.name), has collaborated with 4 artists on a multimedia performance Phenomena Research (dance, live poetry, live visuals, digital poetry, music) and is a member of a poetic collective TRYIE (SJ Fowler, Olga Peková, ZH).

She co-edited with Bogumila Suwara a publication on electronic literature research V sieti strednej Európy: nielen o elektronickej literatúre (2012) and with Martin Solotruk a project about contemporary European poetry: European Poetry Forum. (http://poetryforum.arspoetica.sk).

In 2011, she was a Fulbright scholar at Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT, USA. In 2014 she received a grant Aktion for postdigital poetics research and teaching at the Institut für Sprachkunst, Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna.

Her works were published, performed and exhibited at festivals, events and venues in Europe and USA.

Olga Pek is a poet, translator, organizer and a postgrad student at the Charles University in Prague.

She organizes Prague Microfestival and co-edits the international revue VLAK and the Czech quarterly for contemporary poetry Psí Víno.

Her poetry translations from English have been published in the anthology Polibek s rozvodnou ("Kissing the Substation," 2012). She is a member of the TRYIE poetry collective.

Links:
Presentation of Trans(who?)man
Zuzana Husárová
delezu.net
Prague Microfestival
VLAK
Psí Víno

[image source: Robert Carrithers, Zuzana Husárová, Ondrej Lipar]
[source: Vive Les Robots!]