“Posthuman Ensemble,” referring to “posthuman” individuals coming together in an “ensemble,” is an exhibition that seeks to explore how humans can emerge from a humanist thought to exist in harmony with other nonhuman beings.
ACC FOCUS, an annual exhibition centered on each year’s important issues, highlighted the artworks that invoked the memory of environmental and historical struggles within the boundaries of the ecosystem’s equilibrium for its 2020 exhibition, “Equilibrium.” This year’s “Posthuman Ensemble” exhibition exemplifies the ACC’s support for the efforts of artists who think about the new meaning of posthuman and “new identity” as a counterattack from nature in a world left in the wake of a global pandemic.

The word “posthuman” often brings up associations between human and machinery interface. This is because of the more familiar concept of “transhumanism” formed during the 1950s and 1960s, which focuses on the combination of humans with machinery in the vein of cyborgs. This is exemplified by The Bionic Woman or The Six Million Dollar Man, with an increasing focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and computers. Researchers of the “posthuman” have expanded their focus not only to encompass the familiar fields of transhumanism but also to include the “nonhuman” and humanity’s relationship with those categorized as not human. These efforts are starting points for examining what the values we, as humanity, can pursue as “posthuman” in the Anthropocene period, an age where humanity’s actions, as the masters of the world, lead to climate change and subsequent environmental damages.