Capturing Bodies as Objects: Stereography and the Diorama at Work in Kris Verdonck’s ISOS

Abstract

In this chapter, theatre scholar and dramaturge Kristof van Baarle analyses the older media that are part of a conceptual and technological genealogy of ISOS, an installation by Belgian artist Kris Verdonck. The function of stereography, Muybridge’s chronophotography, and the diorama in the political and economic apparatuses of the nineteenth century allows for a deeper understanding of ISOS’ critical and political use of new media. This media-archaeological approach of ISOS sheds new light on how it reflects the critique of the society of the spectacle (Debord) that is at work in the oeuvre of J.G. Ballard, whose writings were at the basis of this installation. Following Agamben, van Baarle demonstrates that the seed of resistance was already planted in the early uses of these technologies as well.