99

Since the second half of the 20th century some new issues have appeared with medical and technical-scientific progress. These issues contradict the basic facts about the human condition and the ethical reference points that guide the social and individual bond with the body, whether dead or alive. This leads to the creation of ethics committees and institutes, and to new laws. The modern man as subject is involved in questioning and is faced with the body’s place in its reality—an ability to see, to know, and possibilities which seem limitless. These could be the reasons for contemporary art’s interest in the making and manifestations of the human body, dead or alive. But beyond that is the issue of common interest (as ethics of desire) that can lead to a certain “complicity” between art and medicine and between science and its new techniques around the body. In relation to these techniques, in this artistic context, the social and “the law” also tolerate the crossing of limits and prohibitions as opportunities to achieve pleasure, which would normally be censored and punished.