Dea ex Machina

Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again,
Because, for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain!

– Rudyard Kipling, “The Secret of the Machines”

The word “machine” derives from the Greek μηχανή or mēkhanē. In ancient Greece, theatrical productions often made use of a mēkhanē – a crane operated by an elaborate system of pulleys – to suspend an actor over the stage. In classical drama (particularly in the plays of Euripides), this technical apparatus was used to introduce a deity or supernatural character who would effect or hasten the resolution of a conflict – hence the term deus ex machina. Contraptions, that is, have long held a place in Western theater.

But what happens when the machine itself becomes a central character?

The first image I ever saw of Narcissister was a photograph from a 2008 performance piece called “Self-Gratifier,” in which the masked artist mounted a machine of her own devising: an elaborately souped-up exercise bike, replete with a built-in butt plug, a gyrating wheel of flapping whips, a face-oriented, hard-pumping dildo, and a pair of groping plastic hands, all mobilized by her¹ own energetic pedaling. It was simultaneously a biting critique of the hamster-wheel of pointless labor in pursuit of a bodily ideal, and a hilarious tribute to female self-sufficiency. That is, while one might read Narcissister’s self-reflexive performance as critical of the superficiality of certain aspects of late capitalism, there also seems to be room for a reading which is, if not celebratory, at least determined to acknowledge the historical necessity of women – and particularly women of color – taking care of themselves.

The (deliriously) creative re-purposing of found objects, devices, contrivances, machines and engines has long animated Narcissister’s work. Or rather, one might say that her work is that of embodying – and making visible – the ghost in the machine. That is, she makes us see that invisibilized labor (the labor of women, of people of color) is what keeps the machine of the world up and running – for better or for worse. She is the tragicomic dea ex machina.

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¹The sisterhood invoked in Narcissister’s name has political, racial and even spiritual resonances. And while her performances consistently foreground female-presenting bodies, gender in her work, like race, is always both obscured and revealed by a mask. I’m using here she-her pronouns in referring to the artist, but perhaps the more appropriate pronoun to use is the second-person one announced in the title of another of her (on-going) collaborative projects: “Narcissister is You.”

Barbara Browning is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Performance Studies at NYU.