{"id":275583,"date":"2026-05-01T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T00:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/chair-exposee-les-iconographies-crip-tech-de-lerotisme-posthumain\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T09:58:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T14:58:46","slug":"exposed-flesh-crip-tech-iconographies-of-posthuman-eroticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/exposed-flesh-crip-tech-iconographies-of-posthuman-eroticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Exposed Flesh: Crip Tech Iconographies of Posthuman Eroticism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Crip tech builds on earlier interventions in disability studies, particularly Robert McRuer\u2019s book Crip Theory <\/em>(2006), in which he brought disability studies into dialogue with queer theory by arguing that compulsory able-bodiedness operates alongside compulsory heterosexuality.1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - Robert McRuer, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability<\/em> (New York: New York University Press, 2006).<\/span> Against dominant Western medical and social frameworks that treat bodily difference as deficit, this lineage reframes disability as a mode of subject formation capable of exposing the norms that define it as lack. Within this context, the representation of the disabled body becomes a site of resistance to ableist structures. The Canadian multidisciplinary artist Panteha Abareshi, who grounds their practice in their experience of sickle-cell beta-thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder that causes chronic pain, offers interesting insights into these issues. Through performances and installations, they intertwine their body with medical technologies\u200a\u2014\u200aoften in a sexualized way\u200a\u2014\u200ato rethink the afflicted body as an active and sensual identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Artistic creativity operates as a device for assembling bodies and technologies, producing non-normative identity narratives that destabilize dominant models of corporeality. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The Australian performer Stelarc, for instance, has employed technological extensions in his practice to amplify and problematize the capacities of the human body. In this sense, organic and inorganic elements appear inextricably intertwined. The feminist scholar and cultural critic Donna Haraway argues that because we live immersed in technologies that transform our bodies, our modes of thinking, and our relations, we are already cyborgs. In her renowned essay \u201cA Cyborg Manifesto\u201d (1985), Haraway mobilizes the cyborg to unsettle the hegemonic positioning of technology, suggesting that through technological mediation, personal identity can be reconfigured by creative and political practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abareshi\u2019s practice aligns with crip tech. Through complex bodily movements, they integrate the medical machinery essential to their survival, transforming their body into a site of exposure and of shared daily pain. Reflecting on their performance Unlearn the Body<\/em> (2020\u201321), they state, \u201cI am contending every day with the reality that all of my \u2018best\u2019 parts are made from metal, plastic and stone,\u201d underscoring how the hybridization of body and technology is not metaphorical but material, necessary, and profoundly embodied.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - See \u201cUnlearn the Body: Panteha Abareshi,\u201d Emergency INDEX<\/em> (website), February 26, 2026, accessible online.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Panteha Abareshi<\/strong>
(For Parts)<\/em>, video stills, 2020.
Photos: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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In their \u201cCrip Technoscience Manifesto,\u201d researchers and professors Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch trace the roots of crip tech back to techno-feminist criticism, which interprets technology as a reflection and reproduction of the power structures of Western society.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch, \u201cCrip Technoscience Manifesto,\u201d Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience<\/em> 5, no. 1 (2019): 1\u201333, accessible online.<\/span> As feminist and disability scholar Alison Kafer observes, however, feminist technoscientific imaginaries of disability often oscillate between eugenic ideals of a disability-free future and depoliticized representations of the cyborg body as hybrid, thereby eliding the material, relational, and political dimensions of crip experience in the present.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip<\/em> (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).<\/span> Crip tech proposes forms of resistance to policies aimed at treating, normalizing, or eliminating disability, advancing modes of knowledge production and technological making that diverge from dominant productive logics. The technoableist<\/em> ideology that underpins these policies\u200a\u2014\u200athe harmful belief that technology functions as a \u201csolution\u201d to disability and that disability itself must therefore be eradicated\u200a\u2014\u200ais explicitly challenged. By contrast, crip tech affirms the lived experience of disabled people through art practice and technological engagement, centring the work of disabled people as knowers and makers. This process positions disabled people as active agents in designing their own lives, suggesting alternative modes of relating to the world as they participate in the deconstruction of ableist models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Panteha Abareshi<\/strong>
(This Is Not a Body)<\/em>, video stills, 2022.
Photos: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The entanglement of flesh and technology\u200a\u2014\u200aparticularly through medical mobility aids\u200a\u2014\u200aproduces a post-humanity. Abareshi foregrounds the complexities of inhabiting a body that is constantly monitored and examined, questioning the role of the sick and disabled body within medical institutions and ableist society. In the video (For Parts)<\/em> (2020), they examine the emotional and physical changes caused by medical implants and prosthetics. By positioning their body in the tension between organic and inorganic, they highlight how ableist norms regarding performance, appearance, and behaviour define what is considered \u201chuman\u201d and what \u201csubhuman.\u201d In their artistic research any allusion to passivity is disrupted by medical devices that penetrate, support, or surveil the sick body, generating an intimacy between flesh and apparatus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whereas the medical-industrial complex imposes an understanding of pain articulated through clinical language, crip art confronts pain through modalities that resist translation into data. The technological medical devices that govern disabled life through clinical metrics undergo, in Abareshi\u2019s practice, a process of aesthetic re-signification. They highlight that the body cannot be reduced to clinical information; rather, it operates as a fundamental producer of alternative forms of presence, desire, and self-representation. The video (This Is Not a Body)<\/em> (2022) pairs a pulsing industrial soundtrack with images of hospital bracelets, underscoring the paradox between the necessity of medical aids for survival and the impossibility of reducing the subject to them. Anatomy is evoked symbolically, causing discomfort among viewers, who would usually like to be involved in the performance and feel at ease in their privileged bodies. Exposed to their gaze, Abareshi\u2019s body enters a state of sensory hyper-presence<\/em> that gives rise to a new erotic regime, whereby historically marginalized crip subjects redefine the perceptual and affective conditions of non-normative desirability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sexuality and Fetishism in Crip Technoscience<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Crip tech asserts the desirability of the disabled body. Hamraie and Fritsch cite the experience of the queer and disabled collective Sins Invalid,5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - See \u201cAbout,\u201d Sins Invalid<\/em> (website), February 26, 2026, accessible online.<\/span> whose live performances and videos challenge dominant paradigms of \u201cnormal\u201d and \u201csexy\u201d and offer an inclusive vision of beauty and sexuality open to all individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, the disabled dancer Alice Sheppard, through her choreographic work, suggests that the disabled body be understood as fully expressive and meaningful. Through movement, she incorporates erotic desire and sensuality. The performance DESCENT<\/em> (2017\u201318), staged on a curved architectural ramp, features a duet between Sheppard and Laurel Lawson, two wheelchair-using dancers that reimagines the myth of Venus and Andromeda as a queer, interracial love story, foregrounding nonconventional forms of desire and intimacy. Sheppard defines this creative expression\u200a\u2014\u200awhich engages audiences in non-normative actions\u200a\u2014\u200aas \u201ccultural aesthetic disability technoscience.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Alice Sheppard, \u201cStaging Bodies, Performing Ramps: Cultural-Aesthetic Disability Technoscience,\u201d Catalyst:<\/em> Feminism, Theory, Technoscience<\/em> 5, no. 1 (2019): 1\u201314, accessible online.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Laurel Lawson <\/strong>& Alice Sheppard<\/strong>
DESCENT<\/em>, 2017-2018, performance view, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Tallahassee, 2017.
Photo: Chris Cameron\/MANCC, courtesy of Kinetic Light<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Bob Flanagan (1952\u20131996) was a significant exemplar of reclaiming desire through non-normative practices. Living with cystic fibrosis, Flanagan used performance as a means of transforming chronic pain into a symbolic instrument for reasserting the self. Through BDSM practices, he destabilized the notion of the productive body to demonstrate how pain can be renegotiated and rendered meaningful. In the well-known documentary film Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist<\/em> (1997), he explains that masochism was a strategy for surviving illness and argues that when pain is unavoidable, it can function as a means of reclaiming control over the body.7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan<\/em>, Supermasochist<\/em>, directed by Kirby Dick (1997; Santa Monica: Lionsgate Studios, 2003), DVD.<\/span> Through excess and provocation, Flanagan compelled viewers to confront taboos surrounding illness, sexuality, and death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Flanagan\u2019s work, sexuality appears as a radical and performative form of \u201csuper-masochism\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aan artistic and therapeutic instrument for reclaiming control over a suffering body. His chronic illness was terminal and marked by recurrences, interruptions, pauses of pain, and anticipations of death. Works such as Visiting Hours<\/em> (1992\u201394) suspend the idea of controlled and spectacular performative time, replacing it with a duration that is unstable, vulnerable, and dependent on the sick body. Flanagan inhabits the entire mock hospital room, lying on a bed in a gown and connected to a small breathing aid, conveying a sense of suspension of time intimately linked to bodily rhythms. This counter spectacular temporality of illness, paired with sexuality as a practice of emancipation, has been examined by the sociologist Emma Sheppard. In Chronic Pain, BDSM and Crip Time <\/em>(2024),8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Emma Sheppard, Chronic Pain, BDSM and Crip Time <\/em>(Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2024).<\/span> she argues that BDSM, as an extreme erotic practice, offers a condition of self-knowledge structured through non-normative timeframes.9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - This non-conforming temporal experience is theorized by Alison Kafer in her analysis of \u201ccrip time,\u201d described as a radical reorganization of normative temporal expectations. See Kafer, \u201cTime for Disability Studies and a Future for Crips,\u201d in Feminist, Queer, Crip<\/em>, 25\u201346.<\/span> Within BDSM, the disabled body is desiring, and pain does not limit but redefines the very possibility of experience as a will to communicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Panteha Abareshi<\/strong>
Object Desire<\/em>, installation view O-Overgaden, Copenhagen, 2024.
Photo: David Stjernholm, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Flanagan attended to multiple possibilities of existing and being in the world, presenting audiences with fantasies not yet fully co-opted by capitalist culture. In his performances, he encouraged consenting viewers to engage and experiment with non-heteronormative and excessive sexual and bodily pleasures, including BDSM. Similarly, Abareshi compels audiences to endure performances in which the pain of illness merges with pleasure through hospital technological apparatuses. Their work represents a turning point in contemporary discussions of sexuality and disability in new media. The eroticization of the disabled body through medical apparatuses becomes central in Invalid Pleasures<\/em> (2023) and Impaired Erotics <\/em>(2024), solo exhibitions that relate to the practice of crip porn, which explicitly incorporates disability into erotic discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abareshi employs the pornography of the non-normative body as critical visual material to expose mechanisms of objectification within contemporary culture, addressing the complex power relations that surround representations of desire in disabled bodies. The Freudian discourse on the fetishization of the flesh is interpreted in Object Desire<\/em> (2024), a sculpture included in Impaired Erotics<\/em>. The audience, faced with the erotic position of crip corporeality, is invited to question the politics of consent. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Abareshi refers to the fetishization of the body defined by those who have privileges, in relation to what is considered awkward and taboo\u200a\u2014\u200aa dynamic of power over the opportunities granted to disabled people to maintain their autonomy or to be alienated by prejudice.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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According to Abareshi\u2019s research on pornography, the afflicted subject appears as a means of satisfying sexual desire, an ideology that contrasts with the true representation of disabled sexuality. In fact, the non-normative embodiment needs to relinquish control and be free to express its identity, raising the question of what it means to be a human being. Abareshi asserts that our relationships with other people are what make us human by allowing us to transcend our physical shell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shift from endured<\/em> pain to shared<\/em> pain subverts voyeuristic logics: the body is no longer the surface of a symptom but becomes a site where vulnerability and desire function as instruments of self-determination. By adopting a crip position that is anti-assimilationist and affirms disability as a desirable part of the world, these artists raise a radical question: Is it not a matter of becoming visible, but of asking under what conditions we consent to be seen? Reading crip technoscience through art and performative practice opens a space for rethinking subjectivity and the role of the self in contemporary society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The complexities surrounding the representation of disabled bodies in contemporary culture have been taken up by artists and translated into new aesthetic and conceptual languages. Across visual art, performance, and new media, disability is engaged in its wholeness rather than framed as something to be overcome. This orientation is central to crip technoscience (or crip tech), an activist and theoretical framework that rethinks the relationship between disabled people and technology, positioning them as active makers and designers rather than passive users of devices.<\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":275557,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[882],"tags":[],"numeros":[8014],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[8030],"artistes":[8098,8074,8034],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[319],"class_list":["post-275583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post","numeros-117-crip","auteurs-chiara-rauli-en","artistes-alice-sheppard-en","artistes-laurel-lawson-en","artistes-panteha-abareshi-en","type_post-principal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275583"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275587,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275583\/revisions\/275587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275583"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=275583"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=275583"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=275583"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=275583"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=275583"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=275583"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=275583"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=275583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}