Lifelike
Exploring Body Sovereignty in Web3

Lifelike brought together artists logging biological, genetic, and behavioral information on a digital ledger, opening a conversation about body sovereignty in Web3. Presented with EPOCH, the exhibition expanded on ideas from Hofstadter's text Bodies on the Blockchain (2022).

Technology is moving into our bodies, and our bodies are moving into technology. The stakes are high: will we double our health spans or create a techno-dystopian Gilead? The artists in the exhibition considered what it will mean, and how it will feel, to have a body in a future where wetware (living tissue) serves as a foundation for technology, where medical implants monitor our hearts and minds, and where decisions are made by programs none of us fully understand.

Today, phones harvest information about our bodies and behaviors by default. How does it feel to seek digital connection when every swipe, movement, and private message is under surveillance? Since the publication of Hofstadter's original text, Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has warned of unprecedented digital surveillance of abortion seekers in the U.S.; the E.U. has proposed mandatory government scanning of private messages, photos, and videos; and lab-grown human brain cells in a petri dish have learned to play Pong faster than an artificial intelligence. Body sovereignty has always been a privilege, and the history of predatory surveillance is deeply tied to systemic racism. While the aspirational mythology of Web3 promises individuals more control, it does not distribute that power equally, perpetuating technocapitalism's colonial legacy.

Activists and leaders around the globe are demanding legislation to encode equitable human rights for all bodies, which must evolve and keep pace with the technology they use.

The artists in Lifelike brought a creative lens to the conversation: probing how information flows between our biological and virtual identities, expanding our vocabulary through imaginative scenarios, and using their own bodies to push the conversation about the role and rights of all bodies in a hybrid world. By stress-testing Web3's effect on their own bodies, they also raised the possibility that the lab rats might take back control.

About Katie Peyton Hofstadter

Katie Peyton Hofstadter is a Los Angeles and New York-based writer, artist, and curator. Her work explores the role of artists and writers in co-creating systems for the present and the imagined near future. She has co-founded international art campaigns including #MakeUsVisible and the Climate Clock monument, as well as Future Art Models, a project in prefigurative imagination commissioned by apexart. She has contributed to Flash Art, The Believer, BOMB, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Right Click Save, and has taught writing, curating, and public programming at Parsons, The New School, and F.I.T.