The Post-Human Era:
Has Technology Taken Control of How Humans Behave and the Logic
of their Thought?

Doug Aitken
Faurschou Foundation, Beijing
23.03.19 – 27.10.19

Translated by Duncan Hewitt

1973, 6th Avenue, New York: Martin Cooper makes the first mobile telephone call in human history, and the first mobile phone, DynaTAC, is born. This 2-pound brick of a phone is the invention of the Motorola laboratory, its retail price a startling 3,995 US dollars, its emergence heralding the dawn of the age of wireless communications for the human race.

2019, California: Apple Inc. launches its latest iPhone 11 at its headquarters. Today’s mobile phones are far lighter and more portable than those of forty-six years ago, and this smart device, which can be slotted into a pocket, is no longer restricted to merely making phone calls. Rather, like a smart virtual assistant, it can help the user make purchases, navigate a route, make payments and search for the latest restaurant, and can update news and photographs in real time.

Mobile phones have transformed from simple communications tools into a means of enhancing people’s capacity for living and socialising. As Marshall McLuhan described it in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man ( 1964 ), media have become an extension of the organs of the human body. Yet in an age where technology is constantly being upgraded, this description is no longer sufficient to encapsulate the changes that the mobile phone has brought to people’s ways of life and behavioural habits. The subconscious implanting of the mobile phone into our lives has rewritten the logic of human thought, and ushered in a new era of post-human civilisation.

When you enter Doug Aitken’s exhibition with such reflections in mind, the multilayered scene, created by the installation of mirrors and video on all sides, gives you the feeling of being in a kaleidoscope, spying on and observing this historical process from the sidelines. In the video work New Era, eighty-nine-year-old Martin Cooper is the main character: he relates, in a straightforward manner, the story of the invention of the mobile phone and the outlook for future society. The film does not employ any complicated expressive techniques: the start of the story even seems rather blunt, as the elderly Cooper mutters to himself, ‘I made a phone call’, and then goes on to state the facts in an earnest, calm tone. The film makes clever use of a narrative poetry approach to depict three ages – the past, present and future. As Cooper, the primary focus, looks towards the future at the mouth of a cave, which symbolises the roots of human civilisation, flickering rays of light blur our view; in the distance a signal tower appears, standing all alone in a desert, the fictional and the real intersecting each other like phantoms. If we take the era of wireless communications which began with the mobile phone as a reference point for the past, then people in the real world of today are like cars moving around in the network of interweaving wireless communications; the constant flow of traffic on the night-time highway resembles a bustling vision of information exchange in the ether. The numbers on the telephone keypads constantly criss-cross, displaying the unpredictably fluctuating geometric patterns of the kaleidoscope; in the background, the soft humming of the female chorus and the sound of bells echo throughout the installation, weaving a vision of history and the future overlapping. Aitken starts from simple dialogue, to produce, in this limited space, a deconstructive analysis with images and sound; he is continually exploring the current state of human life, in which nature and technology coexist.

If New Era presents the prospects for human life as an open question, then the work 3 Modern Figures ( don’t forget to breathe ), which can be perceived in the mirrors, is a factual depiction of this question. Human forms cast in sanded resin, like cyborgs in a future world, change colour constantly to the rhythm of the faint sound of breathing. The ingenious connection between the two works lies in the way that, while visitors are standing in the midst of the New Era installation, deep in contemplation, they will sense a faint pressure from this other scene – as though the post-humans of the future are observing the process of the development of modern human history. Once mobile phones are connected to the body to form an integrated whole, humanity will have been swallowed up by machines and digital technology. Aitken leads the observer into a scenario that blends space and memory, in order to reflect on how exactly technology has changed humanity.

Since the dawn of human civilisation, technology has been an ancillary tool that has continuously promoted the development of civilisation. We have made use of this tool to satisfy our daily needs, and have learned to apply it skilfully. With the advent of the industrial revolution, as the new machines that were constantly being developed were extending human senses, they gradually gave rise to new productive forces, which could surpass humans’ own physical limitations. Humans themselves believe that they proactively chose machines, yet, in fact, without our realising it, machines have imperceptibly changed our bodies and our habits. The first mobile phone – whether in terms of its appearance or its function – was more like ‘a miniature wireless radio device’, but as smart technology has developed, we now make use of our phones to gather online information in order to complete tasks, process our personal data and replace identity documents. At the same time, they are also shrinking and becoming ever more intimately interconnected with humans’ daily lives.

More and more people have developed a dependence on these devices that goes beyond the material, like the human forms in 3 Modern Figures ( don’t forget to breathe ), which either have their heads down or are reclining or sitting. You need more nimble fingers to use a smartphone, and sharper eyesight to adapt to the brightness of the screen and the size of the text. If you are unable to satisfy these requirements, RFID ( radio-frequency identification ) chip implant technology can replace human senses, and check relevant data readings. Such scenes are no longer only the province of science-fiction films – smart devices have already overtaken the organs of the human body, and have turned from external physical aids to internal, psychological devices. This type of addictive quality and these changes to the structure of the human body have exerted an influence on human beings’ actions and consciousness, which, though invisible, cannot be ignored.

Technical progress has brought with it super-smart gadgets, with the result that thought is no longer an individual activity. Human reflection is no longer limited only to oneself – amid the unlimited network connections, information is continuously being stored, remembered and recreated, and man’s search for ideas has already gone beyond actual human existence. As Michel Foucault revealingly observes in his discussion of ‘the death of man’ in The Order of Things ( 1966 ), if what dies is our awareness and understanding of human beliefs, can humankind still, in the latter phase of technological development, make judgements regarding its own inherent value? In the face of thoughts and actions that have been guided by technology, are we still able to reflect independently, without relying on these smart devices themselves? Or indeed, when the devices disappear and humans and machines merge into one, how much independence of action will we retain?

Although Aitken has turned this fragmented narrative into a fantasy space where various landscapes interact, the exhibition’s final installation work, Crossing the Border, does not necessarily lead the viewer to draw links with the previous focus on the swallowing up of contemporary life by digital technology. The giant silhouette of the saintly Gandhi, cut from stone and concrete slabs, stands upright in the exhibition space; a stream of water flows from cracks in the stone slabs, creating the visual effect of a waterfall. Aitken, taking Gandhi’s non-violent non-cooperation as an example, proposes fighting back against the ‘swallowing up’, by staying out of step with the technological age.

Yet we can never revisit history. Technology has invaded our bodies and our consciousness with a powerful force, and the creation of a hybrid of man and machine has already become an irreversible trend. The constant refining of biomimicry means that Aitken’s lovely utopian vision can exist only in the imagination. Perhaps, as far as humans are concerned, rather than seeking a return to an irretrievable past inspired by feelings of naturalism and romanticism, it would be better to contemplate how, in the post-human era, we can resist the changes brought upon our bodies by controlling technology. For, as Foucault said, ‘Man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.’¹

1. Michael Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences ( 1966 ), ( London and New York: Routledge ), 2002, p. 422.