I would like to take this opportunity to bring back together an international and intersectional group of exhibitors I have previously worked with on a new exhibition called ‘Sleeve After-Shock’.
Taken from Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, sleeves are the term used for bodies that serve as a receptacle for the human consciousness. The body an individual is born with is called their Birth Sleeve.
A recurring theme in Transhumanist thinking is that one day we will be able to upload our human consciousness into some form of device which can then be relocated into a new body (re-sleeved), whether naturally born, modified or artificially created, as required or desired.
When an individual is re-sleeved they often experience a degree of sleeve shock. The more foreign the sleeve is in comparison to the individual’s birth sleeve, in terms of age, race, gender etc, the more intense the shock. This could be anything from gender dysphoria, the results of sexual violence, to alopecia.
Whilst we are not living in 2384, the year of Altered Carbon, this does provide us with a future-retro perspective on aspects of identity conflict felt by so many of us.
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