Waiting For Earthquakes - Cyborg Moon Ribas and the Sense of Nature

My chosen object is Moon Ribas' Waiting For Earthquakes, a continuous dance piece based on a dialogue between seismic movements and the dancer. The physical choreography itself is not my main focus, rather it is the role of technology implanted in Ribas as the cause for her movements and the discourse that surrounds this act. Ribas is an activist, artist and a cyborg who, alongside fellow cyborg Neil Harbisson, created the Cyborg Foundation which focuses on cyborgism as a positive social and artistic movement. This paper will delve into the posthuman figure of the cyborg as a concept that aims to bring one closer to nature through its process of becoming and blurring of rigid boundaries. By beginning with a focus on Donna Haraway's cyborg and continuing with how different named becomings contribute to Ribas' notion of cyborg, the productivity of the cyborg concept in application to issues of human-nature connectivity will be assessed.

The cyborg, in application to Ribas, is not a futuristic or negative use of technology formed to overcome humanity, instead it is a practical figure of hope that has the ability to bridge the gap between human and nature as is evident from the labelling of the current epoch, the Anthropocene. Ribas' new implanted sense brings her closer to nature because she not only feels the physical earth, but she now also shares a sense with certain species of animals. She therefore claims a broader understanding of natural experience outside of the human realm. This understanding decentres the anthropos and promotes a posthuman future where the boundaries of matter - human, animal and technology - become blurred.

Ribas has had permanent sensors implanted in her body since 2013 that allow her to perceive earthquakes across the globe through intensity of vibrations in her elbow, a sense that she hopes soon to transfer to her feet. Waiting For Earthquakes is an artistic representation of this new sense, named the “seismic sense” by Ribas. It is a dance performance where Ribas' seismic vibrations are translated into movement, thus if no vibrations are perceived during the time of the performance, then no choreography occurs. Outside of the performance space, Ribas constantly experiences vibrations which have become a new sense for her. The dance is an invitation to the audience to listen to the sound of the Earth, transformed and translated from the inner art felt by Ribas as a cyborg.

Ribas expresses in her TED talk that she does not want technology to feel distant from her art or choreography, but for it to be natural as another sense. She claims to have only felt truly cyborg once the motion of the vibrations became an emotion and compares her seismic sense to her heartbeat, it becomes an “earthbeat” (Ribas). Once this emotion had been established, Ribas felt closer to nature because she was able to experience different earthly senses via her new implant. Adding new senses to the body can thus help us, as humans, to rediscover the planet we live in. Experiencing seismic movements is not a novel concept as a number of animals can sense this activity. By assimilating herself with animals as non-humans through her new sense, Ribas' technology and cyborgism actually brings her closer to a world where the perception and limits of what it means to be human become blurred.

Ribas' earthbeat is an engaging role reversal of the human treatment of the non- human animal that has already been assimilated with the cyborgean concept. Through the manipulation of animals and nature in human consumption, the margin that Ribas highlights as a positive blending has already been blurred through implantation of pig heart valves, stem-cell technology and vaccines (Parker-Starbuck 652). Animals have already become tools with which the human has become-cyborg (Clynes 35). The non-human has already got “under our skin” (Parker-Starbuck 655), both figuratively and literally, yet it is Ribas' animal and earthly technology that distances human control of the non-human. The boundaries between human and animal have already been crossed, but only with an anthropocentric view whereby humans were benefiting from the pain of animals in their 'accidental' goal to becoming cyborg. Ribas as cyborg is a reversal of this definition. Instead of manipulating nature to fit humanistic needs, her new sense and its portrayal in her performance shows how one is able to harness the environment in order to further lived experience without damage, rather than manipulating the non-human for anthropocentric gains.

As Ribas is both woman and cyborg, one cannot ignore the solicitation with Haraway. Haraway's cyborg first and foremost rejects the rigid boundaries of patriarchal society, focusing on the limitations that distinguish human from both animal and machine (150). This cyborg figure urges feminists to look beyond these traditional boundaries, to a future where beings and matter are fused to become one. By highlighting this fused future of connectivity Haraway diverts patriarchal and anthropocentric structures whilst also exploring the topic of new technologies that emerged in the late twentieth century.

Ribas as cyborg breaks these rigid boundaries. She pushes past the limit of what is perceived as cyborg in mainstream media by not only being a woman, but also by being a site through which the bridging of human and animal, nature and culture, occurs in a non- consumerist manner.

Ribas is a cyborg in the literal or media sense - part human, part technology (but fortunately not equating to anything like the Terminator) - and also subscribes to the tropes of the conceptual cyborg. Haraway's cyborg looks to a unified future through broken boundaries. Ribas' implants, their effect and use in performance, translate the possibility of looking past the limited relationship that humans have with the environment towards this future.

Ribas' alignment with nature highlights the oppression of both women and the environment by presenting their combination in performance - when the Earth quakes, so does woman. Ribas' work thus displays connecting the two via technology and cyborgism can form emancipation. Her alignment emphasises what the common conception of the human is - white, male and wealthy (Braidotti, Four Theses 23) - by becoming Other or non-human (animal, technology and woman) thus questioning the anthropocentric biases of contemporary society. In order to perceive this alignment, Ribas' process of different becomings displays this potential emancipation.

“Becoming-posthuman consequently is a process of redefining one's sense of attachment and connection to a shared world, a territorial space: urban, social, psychic, ecological, planetary as it may be.” - (Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman 193)

Braidotti summarises what it means to become posthuman and thus spurs on the detail of other becomings. By identifying as cyborg who is technologically attached to nature and animality, Ribas does so redefine her sense (literally) of attachment to the shared world conceptualised by Haraway. Becoming-posthuman encompasses Ribas as she redefines her sense of connection to the world as an ecological space (see Braidotti above). She does so through a process of other becomings. These multiple becomings within posthumanist and new materialist thought signify an “enmeshment of matter and discourse” that is “based on the understanding that interconnections between entities form the basis of life” (New Materialism). Such becomings “offer a challenge for us to be something new, something beyond skin, beyond a fixed sense of self” (Parker-Starbuck 651).

Parker-Starbuck highlights becomings through performance as actions that create “moments of suspension between humans and machines and animals that often emerge from cyborgean ontology” (649). Through the concept that she defines as “becoming- animate”, the limitations of the human are exposed, and a form of sensory awareness emerges, revealing the gaps between animal, machine and human (649).

By becoming cyborg with technology and then with nature through her Waiting For Earthquakes performance, Ribas makes us, the audience or viewer, reconsider the interdependency and impact between human, technology and animal. It is this becoming- animate through performance that broadens the impact of other becomings (Parker- Starbuck 652).

Braidotti highlights further becomings. In Ribas' context, by becoming-animal one can attempt to be distanced from the anthropos and the unproductive hierarchy of the animal kingdom that relies on the assumption of animals existing only in relation to humans (Braidotti 68). Becoming-animal is focal motivation for Ribas in the introduction of her new sense. It is this becoming that creates the emotion from the mimicry of animal motion and thus where the connection to nature lies.

Ribas as cyborg becomes both animal and machine. Becoming-machine looks past the commercialisation of technology and hopes to re-imagine a non-hierarchical relationship where species combine with a goal of common ethics (Braidotti 92). By incorporating technology into her own physicality, Ribas breaks down the boundary of human and machine, becoming Haraway's cyborg, and thus creates a posthuman subject. Ribas claimed to want technology not to be distant in her performance, yet perhaps this has meant that becoming-machine is a fall back for becoming-animal. Contrary to Parker- Starbuck's statement that technology becomes focal in performance (649), in terms of Ribas, technology is perhaps perceived as a stepping-stone for becoming-animal. Unlike the way she perceives her new sense as natural entanglement, technology seems to become a means to an end rather than an appreciation or understanding in its own right. It could be considered here to replace the animal in humanity, harnessed for sensory gain or exploitation in a similar historical pattern (Parker-Starbuck 655). Nonetheless, the process of becoming-machine as a precursor to becoming-animal still achieves this end goal of a stronger relationship to nature. By becoming-animal, Ribas still subscribes to the notion of cyborg as laid out by Haraway and other posthuman scholars. Much like becoming-animate, becoming-machine broadens the impact of more prevalent becomings and thus still remains a productive process to subscribe to Ribas.

Ribas' seismic sense, her earthbeat, and her interpretation of such new influences in her performance has created broad discourse concerning the role of the cyborg. The emphasis by Ribas of her alignment with nature and the animal through a shared sense distances us from perceived troubling stereotypes of technology as a danger to humankind. The blurring of human and non-human produced from becoming-animal, via the process of becoming-machine and this display in becoming-animate, cyborgean Ribas is a figure who breaks boundaries enforced by traditional patriarchal and anthropocentric notions. Her manipulation of technology and the presentation of this manipulation via performance and visuality highlights the relevance of cyborgism for our present day. By connecting the rising prevalence of technology, a common societal fear, back to the roots of nature, the figure of Ribas emphasises a potential solution to environmental issues through a reconstruction of the human relationship with nature.