What does the word “dyscorpia” mean to you?

Dyscorpia, a play on dyscopia with an added r for "corpus" (body in latin) or "corps" (body in French not corpse).

It could suggest a world that cannot cope, or getting out of the body (discorpia as in disrobing...) or dissecting, deconstructing the notion of "bodies"...

As one of the primary “engines” behind Dyscorpia, what were you hoping this exhibition might achieve?

After a rewarding collaborative experience on the transdisciplinary project The Body in Question(s)(2012))(bodyinquestions.com) presented in Edmonton in 2015, I wished to continue my connection with this rich artistic and scientific community in my new tryptich Eve 2050.

Opening a dialogue through shared questions and documentation I was hoping to discover different perceptions and approaches on topics explored in Eve 2050 and encourage collaborations, explorations and creation on the subject.

I am growing increasingly aware of living in mystery and wonder; our body, the cosmos, the nature of reality... Layered to this pre-existing world is a new one, which we are creating...and building at an increasing pace...This gives one furiously to think and imagine, raising endless concerns, as well as awe...

I hope to encourage artists and scholars to collaborate in questioning, creating and inspiring this new world...

How does your work speak to the body and our relationship to technology? What is the crossover between the ethics and aesthetics of your work?

My exploration of the body is situated at the confluence of the primal body and the body of the future. I am fascinated by the more ancient parts of our neural architecture, connected to the reptilian brain, and how they are still active if not predominant in determining our reactions and actions today. Similarly I've been delving into how our connection to technology might be creating new neural pathways transforming the way we think, act and move, which brings me to try to imagine how we might be transformed in the future. In the first part of the triptych Eve 2050, the web-series, we've explored the idea of augmentation: firstly through fusion with the machines which has been brought into the mainstream consciousness because of the huge investments of giants like Google and also generally through science fiction. We've also explored the idea of "organic" augmentation through hybridization with other living species, new rituals of birth and death, and finally the idea of sapiens splitting into three different species; the "fused" with the machine, the hybrids and the "pure" sapiens who refuse augmentation or cannot afford it...

My work on the body addresses the notion of diversity with regards to gender, age, culture, origin... This idea is reflected in the aesthetics of the works through multigenerational distributions (in The Body in Question(s) performer's ages ranged from 20 to over 60, in Symphonie 5.1 from 10 to 37, in Eve 2050 from 2 to 70), as well as multicultural distributions and the blurring of gender achieved through costumes for instance. It also raises the notion of multiple perceptions of the body which, in the The Body in Question(s), comes from the various aesthetics brought by the contrasting works of the contributing artists...

What do you believe are the limits of the body in 2019? Can you envision how it will be different in 50 years from now? 100?

Disease, injury, aging and mortality are still our limits today... According to the historian Yuval Noah Harari, as individuals we also have a much more limited intelligence today than we did in prehistorical times because we are so specialized... It is always interesting to look into the past while we look at the future...

In trying to imagine the future of the body I think what is most vital is the realization that we need to conceptualize it in a completely new way, not as a separate entity but as an ecosystem, which in turn is part of other ecosystems. We already know thanks to increasing research on the microbiome that our bodies are ecosystems, that through our microbiomes we in turn form ecosystems with our partners, families, pets...We also know that our health depends on how we interact with our environment, that we can't improve the health of one without the other in any sustainable way...

Whole new artificial ecosystems are being developed through AI, robotics, biotechnologies etc...We will have to integrate them into our world, our space and our bodies, at best they will become extensions of our minds, bodies and consciousness, new forms of "life" to interact with or perhaps they will replace us...

Perhaps in ancient times all life replaced and outlived whoever or whatever created it...