Stelarc is a performance artist famously known for creating pieces of work that explore the limitations of the human body. Especially the skin. He has become a machine controlled by computer users around the world, he has suspended himself from meat hooks connected to his body and he has inserted a genetically grown ear into his fore-arm.
“Stelarc has repeatedly challenged what is possible in the most complex relationship between the human and the machine” (Giannachi, 2004, p.55). This in conjunction with other research on Stelarc suggests that he is interested on focusing on the complex relationships between an number of things, however he does often use technology in his pieces. Could this be because “the computer mouse is an extension of the arm” (Giannachi, 2004, p. 1)?
Stelarc’s Ear on Arm is what I remember most about his work and this piece is a completely different use of skin in comparison to our performance.
Ear on Arm involved a series of operations that resulted in the artist having an ear underneath the skin of his arm. This ear not only hears but transmits as well. Stelarc argues that
“For me the body is an impersonal, evolutionary, objective structure. Having spent two thousand years prodding and poking the human psyche without any real discernible changes in our historical and human outlook, we perhaps need to take a more fundamental physiological and structural approach, and consider the fact that it’s only through radically redesigning the body that we will end up having significantly different thoughts and philosophies.” (N.D)
I can understand that this suggests how dedicated Stelarc is to his art, and that he truly believes that poking and re-sculpturing the body will affect the way we think and our philosophies. This just goes to show how one aspects of a performance can be used in another to create a completely different effect. We have explored the limitation of the body, in regards to Alex and Abbie starving themselves, and pushing fitness with spinning etc, whereas Stelarc uses the limitations of the skin and psyche of the body. Stelarc believes that by modifying the skin we have, we could change the perceptions of the world.
Work Cited
Giannachi, Gabriella (2004) Virtual Theatres: an introduction, Oxon: Routelage
Stelarc, Extended-Body: Interview with Stelarc, Online: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/stelarc/a29-extended_body.html (Accessed 21st March 2013)