Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle Revisited: towards post-human becomings of man

Abstract

It is now well over a decade since the artist Matthew Barney's epic work the Cremaster Cycle was completed. This essay returns to the post-human becomings of man that populate Barney's elaborately cross-referenced, aesthetic pluriverse, in particular addressing how the man-form labours amidst and on his environment-worlds, inclusive of the architectural augmentations that assist in the production of such worlds. Revisiting Barney's Cremaster Cycle now offers the opportunity to ask what becomes of the exclusionary and exhaustive world-making performances of the Anthrop once he has placed extreme stress on himself and his mental, social and environmental ecologies, so that any mutual support s..