Stelarc born Stelios Arcadiou in 1946, but legally changed his name in 1972)
is a Cyprus born performance artist raised in the Melbourne His works focus
heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his
pieces are centered on his concept that "the human body is obsolete".
Work
Stelarc is a performance artist who has visually probed and acoustically
amplified his body. He has made three films of the inside of his body.
Between 1976-1988 he completed 26 body suspension performances with hooks
into the skin. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics,
Virtual Reality systems, the Internet and biotechnology to engineer intimate
and involuntary interfaces with the body. He explores Alternate Anatomical
Architectures with augmented and extended body constructs.His works are
"Third Hand", "Extended Arm", "Virtul Arm", "A Sculpture and Exoskeleton",
"Fractal Flesh", "Ping Body and Parasite Prosthetic Head", "Extra Ear"
My thoughts
Stelarc according to his philosophy that "the human body is obsolete". is an
interesting concept concept. As I was drawn to his art because Stelarc puts his
own body in the crossfire of his work of his body suspension performances
with hooks into the skin and also leveraging wis body with pulleys. One might
wonder if he is trying to prove his concept by hanging with aids, or duo to the
fact the body can not stain this. The fact remains that Stelarc's idea was a
head of its time then as we do not have all the advances in these technologies
as we do today where we can more easily replace parts of the human body.