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In our ongoing series of feminist art manifestos, today we have the “Extropic Art Manifesto of Transhumanist Arts,” written in 1997 by Natasha Vita-More. Vita-More is an American designer and theorist, and one of the pioneers of the transhumanist movement. She is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors of “Humanity+,” an organization the ethical use of emerging technologies to enhance human capacities.
We are transhumans.
Our art integrates the most eminent progression
of creativity and sensibility
merged by discovery.
I am the architect of my existence. My art reflects my vision and represents my values.
It conveys the very essence of my being—coalescing imagination and insight, challenging all limits.
We are exploring how current and future technologies affect our senses, our cognition and our lives.
Our attention to these relationships become fields of art as we participate in the most immediate and
vital issues for transhumanity—extending life, augmenting intelligence and creativity, exploring the universe.
Artists, as communicators, bring together the passions, the dreams and the hopes of transhumanity and
express these emotions in ways that touch us deeply.
Transhumanist Arts reflects an extropic appreciation of aesthetics in a technologically enhanced world.
We are voices of transhumanity. Our voices are a synthesis, rhythm and exploration of imagination.
The Transhumanist Arts movement and its genres regard art as more than an artifact.
Art influences social and cultural change: how we live and who we are.
It creates a sense of self, art as being, autonomous yet connected to culture’s
continuum. How we accomplish our intentions is a matter of selective individual choice—
whether abstract or representational, whether artifact or conceptual.
Our criteria for art remain open and we welcome cross-disciplinary innovations.
As we move into the 21st Century,
Transhumanist Arts and Extropic Art will suffuse the universe around us.
Our unique ingenuity will spread far out into the capillaries of our culture.
We are active participants in our own evolution from human to posthuman.
We are shaping the image—the design and the essence—of what we are becoming.
—Natasha Vita-More
Image above: Natasha Vita-More, via tryangle.fr.