‘The terrible things I’ve done’: undisciplined subjectivity of the cyborg within intermedial performance practice

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 15-minute slots, theatre company Invisible Ink invited participants to enter a room by themselves, make a call on a rotary phone, and tell an answering machine about a terrible thing they had done and how they felt about it. In this paper I argue that the body of each participant, in the moment of speaking into the phone, became a cyborg body, producing a new form of cyber-subjectivity by revealing an abjected story. I examine this moment as an instance of rupture in the disciplinary processes of self-curation through the strategic use of intermediality.