“Transhumanism” was defined in 1957 by biologist JULIAN HUXLEY as “man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his ‘human nature.” The Transhumanist movement was defined by a group of artists, scientists and philosophers in the 1980’s with the purpose of supporting emergent technologies that enabled humans to become smarter, faster and stronger.

The “Augmented Human” is now a thing of the present. Genetic engineering, biotechnology, and nano-robotics (microscopic robots inside the body) among others have been created to overcome human frailty through an increase in sensory attributes and the development of human models with ‘superpowers’ free of corrosion.

The group exhibition entitled I​nhuman​ presented at Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany addresses the tensions and contradictions vexing the concept of ‘human being’ in our increasingly amped-up world. The artists participating in the exhibition offer, ­according to the press release, “visions of the human being as a socially trained yet resistant body, transcending biologically or socially determined gender classifications as a digitally immortal entity, or as a constantly evolving self. They visualise the constructs that define what is human and shift existing perspectives on human subjectivity and the body, thereby questioning the primacy of the human being at a fundamental level.”

To walk through the show is to be confronted with a mutant view of contemporary existence. The ground floor showcases STEWART UOO’s Security Window Grills. A piece produced from grills used to protect building windows ornamented with human hair and fake flesh. There is also a painting by JANA EULER, Under This Perspective, 1​(2015), offering a pudgy phallic optical illusion and work from ALEKSANDRA DOMANOVIĆ titled H​eLa on Zhora’s coat​ (2015) featuring pattern-based images of HeLa cells.

The first floor displays a hybrid assemblage of props from sci-­fi films by DORA BUDOR and OSCAR LARIC’s U​ntitled​(2014) which proposes a hypnotic morphing animation that together with the steel pipes, prints, and vacuum plastic sculptures by NICOLAS DESHAYES provides structure to one of the largest spaces in the Fridericianum.

On the same floor, DAVID DOUARD’s complex installation portrays figures, household furniture, everyday objects, architectural components and fragments of past artworks​ as thought­ provoking machines.

The second floor consists of an immersive installation by JOHANNES PAUL RAETHER titled Cave of Reproductive Futures​ (2015) and presents a series of buggies quartered into a white universe made of wipes.

Inhuman​ escapes any precise or post-­apocalyptic definition of what a human is or can be. Instead the show plots dynamics of “body” and “self” to calibrate voids and structures, circulation and stasis, and narrative and science into an organic equilibrium.