Manchester Science Festival: You Have Been Upgraded

Thursday 18 October 2018,
7.30pm – 10pm (doors 7pm) 
Science and Industry Museum
Liverpool Road, Castlefield
Manchester M3 4FP 

You Have Been Upgraded, a live conference responding to theme of Future Bodies. Looking at how we choose to enhance our sensory and physical selves, with talks, interactions and performances that share a positive open approach to considering body enhancement. The curators have included tattoo in this discussion programme, and you can get involved with this traditional form of human enhancement.

Do you want to be part of the event? 

Unlimited Theatre is looking for a model to be tattooed live as the headline performance at You Have Been Upgraded. One applicant will be selected to receive a free tattoo by Rebecca De Cadorette, a blackwork tattoo artist and former biologist at the University of Manchester with a particular interest in human evolution and futurology. Working out of her studio in Stretford, Manchester, ‘DC’ uses her backgrounds in research, science and art to design future bodies and ritual tattoo to transform the wearer beyond the ‘normal’. This piece will be fitted to suit the body of the successful applicant: fully custom, the client will receive a blackwork, hand span sized original design.

Unlimited Theatre invites Manchester or North West based sci-art enthusiasts to apply for a free tattoo here. (application is open for longer for blog readers).

The curators would like to hear from applicants who:

– Have an interest in transhumanism
– Are passionate about science and art
– Are enthusiastic about sharing their experience with press and social media
– Are over 18 years old
– Are based in Manchester or the North West of England
– Are willing to submit to the artists’s final say on the look of the design
– Are available to participate in You Have Been Upgraded on October 18th in Manchester
– Are available to attend two sessions at a Long Time Dead Tattoo Studio during the months of September-October.

Tattooist Rebecca De Cadorette speaking on the power of tattoos:

Tattoo is ancient as well as transhuman. visual and honest – it’s the blood magic of self ownership.  Building our future selves. Post-trauma. Post-joy. Transformative literally, brave because it is painful, committed because it is permanent and joyful because it is honest. Determinism and being the master of your fate for whatever small snippet of time and however many square inches of matter you are give, and knowing that all of this can be filled with choices made, experiments in self run, skins shed and cast aside.  Who am I – who do I want to be and how will I become. How you do anything is how you do everything – so choose. People have been choosing to mark and alter their bodies with ink for thousands of years, and it’s a process that transforms. Adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine are the chemistry of our transformation. There’s some old fashioned alchemy of having that tattoo with the right person, at the right time for the right reasons is very powerful. And no, it’s not all that permanent,we all die, we are all mortal and it’s all going in the bin sooner or later. How you do anything is how you do everything. This is the philosophy of Long Time Dead. Get mortal.