Eric Culhane

For my senior capstone project in the fall, I created a performance-installation: Cybermimetics: Live Performance Archive. This project uses corporeal mime, a theatrical art form that I have studied at Pomona College with Professor Thomas Leabhart since my sophomore year, to situate live performance and archive as intertwined experiences. I performed in a cybernetic installation space designed to intentionally contrast my corporeal presence with a series of fragmented, digital performance documents. 

My spring capstone paper, “Cybermimetics: Corporeal Mime as a Model of Posthumanism,” is a more thorough analysis of the ideas that informed my performance-installation. Although there is not a strong pre-existing relationship between the fields of corporeal mime and media studies, I argue that the human body is an integral form of media in corporeal mime. I refer to theories of cybernetics, body/performance art, and posthumanism to advance arguments for why embodiment remains integral to performance and consider ways in which corporeal mime can explore and express cybernetic relationships.