I'm going to be delivering a lecture with powerpoint presentation on the way that artists are intersecting with science and medicine, with an emphasis on the work of Stelarc. The lecture isn't until early October however my working title is:
STELARC Tripartite: Multiple, Fragmented and Dispersed.
Key areas covered:
Biological/polyethylene - Extra Ear: Ear on the Arm
9 casts of arm (glass, aluminium, bronze)
Mural chromogenic print (large-scale self-portrait)- Digital to Analogue.
Tissue-engineered Partial Head Project
Cloning, tissue engineering, Fragmentation, Posthuman, Primates
Other artists/images relevant to discussion:
Steve Haworth, 3D sub-dermal implants
Orlan - cartilage 'horn' impants in forehead
Nancy Burson's Evolution II
John Isaacs’ Untitled (Monkey) (1995)
Lisa Roet Primate Hands (2002)
Patricia Piccinini’s Big Mother (2005)
Connie Culp (first US face transplant from female cadaver, 2009)
Isabella Dinoir, cadaver face transplant (France, 2005)
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I've transferred this comment from one made to me by Mac Dunlop (artist, poet, filmmaker, editor of Cornish World Magazine) who said that he saw
ReplyDelete'Stelarc's work as more part of the classical in sculpture, in its obsession with form, i.e. search of perfection through proportions, as opposed to emotive sensibility that arise from other modern sculptors such as Rodin, Brancussi, Baselitz, Hepworth, Duchamp. And therein lies a crucial differnece in aethetics, because one modern strand implies or expresses through the body/what it is to be human, ( as in the later examples) while the attainment of perfection through manipuation - like the cosmetic alterations of Orlan, or Jordan for that matter only illustrate that there is no 'perfect'. Such is Stelarc's tragetory - to take the body further, and find out if everything else (philosophy/what it is to be human) can be dragged into a potential future. Sometimes perfection is a problem in itself'. (Facebook 28 September, 2009).
If, as Mac states, Stelarc work is more part of the classical in sculpture, ie, a search of perfection through proportions, why does Stelarc continually disrupt body equilibrium & symmetry by creating multiples - third hand, extra ear, extra limbs (as in the robotic performances) if not to challenge the veracity of the human body? Might this be his way, like Orlan of questioning the whole notion of perfection in our culture and instead allowing a recognition, or an embrace of imperfection, which more fully describes what is human?
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