後現代的戲耍或後人文的倫理？以卡茨的臆∕異想世界為例

Postmodern Play or Post humanist Ethics?: Eduardo Kac’s Bioart as a Case in Point

當代藝術家卡茨（Eduardo Kac）除了以媒體藝術聞名，也因為經常在作品中使用不同的生物體而頗具話題性，雖然其中不少作品乍看之下都像是迎合後現代風潮的戲耍之作，也不無以「讓觀者參與作品的完成」為噱頭的嫌疑，但長期投入動物研究的貝克（Steve Baker）認為卡茨的作品可以引領觀者去思考自身對他者的責任，提倡「後人文主義」思維的沃夫（Cary Wolfe）更表示，卡茨挑戰了人／動物二元對立的既定觀點，展現出後人文主義的關懷。卡茨的作品是否確如對他大加肯定的論者所言，並非只是譁眾取寵的後現代戲耍？本論文將以其數件運用了不同生物體的科技藝術作品為例，分兩大軸線進行論述：一方面探討卡茨如何回應「動物能否企近世界？」、「人如何企近動物經驗？」等傳統哲學所提出的質問；另一方面則思考卡茨的作品如何與「自生發」的概念對話，從而跳脫傳統再現手法的困境、開啟對於主客體的不同思考。透過本論文的探討，我們將能得知卡茨臆想「異類」的方式如何改變了人類中心的視野，乃至發展出後人文的倫理觀。

Emerging in the early 90s with his media art, Eduardo Kac is also wellknown for employing different life-forms in his creative process. Some of Kac’s artworks, at first sight, may appear to be spectacular or even gimmicky. Nevertheless, Steve Baker argues that Kac’s bioart is serious and meta-ethical rather than deliberately provocative. In a similar vein, Cary Wolfe contends that Kac actually destabilizes our received views of the human/animal dichotomy. In what sense can Kac’s art be exempted from the cliched postmodern play? Isn’t his employment of animals a stratagem designed to attract attention? Exploring some of his technological artworks which utilize life-forms from germs to bats, this paper seeks to answer how Kac’s creative envisioning of the alien others eventually leads the viewer to reflect upon ethical issues. In short, this paper covers two main sections. In the first section, I investigate how Kac addresses questions such as “Does the animal only have a limited access to the world?” and “Can we know what experiences the non-human animals may have?.” The second section shows how Kac’s works, remaining open to the viewers’ behaviors, come into productive dialogue with the theory of autopoiesis. Even though we cannot claim that all is necessarily well in the world of Kac’s bioart, I conclude that his attempts to conceptualize a more ethical relationship with non-human others open up the possibilities for different sentient beings to co-exist and co-evolve.