STELARC'S ANTHROPOMORPHIC MACHINE IN SCIENCE GALLERY, MELBOURNE

 

Stelarc’s immense Anthropomorphic Machine (Swarm, Science Gallery, Swanston Street, Melbourne, a stand-alone eight-meter-high kinetic sculpture was in stasis when I viewed it on Saturday morning.

It is an imposing poetic artwork that is aesthetically pleasing. It’s rigid internal structure is partially surrounded by an armature of inter meshed repetitive, insect-like connections, representing perhaps the neuronal nodes in a human brain or the hive mind created by the use of communications technologies. Kevin Kelly noted in the nineties at the birth of this vast system that we had become ‘mere neurons in the network’ (Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Fourth Estate, London, 1994, p.36). And we are. Mind to mind. Disconnected from a power source this stand-alone artwork is aesthetic, totemic, a sentinel. Powered up it becomes networked and reveals its potential as the disturbed hive swarms. Each individual node organizing into coordinated motion or action. In the hive mind no one individual is in control and yet through the chaos order.is maintained, action initiated. Insects are vectors not only of disease but also of information and in this pandemic time the growth of both is exponential. Life is viral. ‘All that is solid melts into air’ (Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848). And all these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain (Roy Batty, Blade Runner, 1982.)

This Anthropomorphic Machine reflects the virtual networked self, more alone than ever before because we have reduced face to face contact with others. As such it is significant that this object inhabits the Science Gallery for like Gaia, the large-scale Earth by UK artist Luke Jerram, that hung in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, it is an object to be experienced in its physicality in real life.

As I contemplated the artwork, its geometric shapes, its simplicity of form surrounded by a complex inter-meshed crown I was reminded of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. A circle with the form of man spread-eagled within. His hands and feet extending to the circle’s edge. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio the Roman architect 1^st Century BC maintained ‘It is worthy of remark that the measures necessarily used in all buildings and other works, are derived from the members of the human body, as the digit, the palm, the foot, the cubit, and that these form a perfect number’. Plato called ten the perfect number (The Architecture of Marcus Vitrivius Pollio, London 1874). Indeed, the Doric order obtained its proportion, its strength and its beauty from the human figure. So, although Stelarc’s body is not part of this artwork (he is generally known for his performance work in which his body is physically part of the artwork and interacts with a technological prosthetic augmentation) the human body is referenced in regards to the hiss of the machine, its pneumatic rubber muscles, its stainless steel tendons, its mechanical eyes, its unseen mind, its breath of life.

Visually the circular base of the Anthropomorphic Machine with its six dark rising tentacles is reminiscent of Da Vinci’s drawing of lever and springs c.1497 and overall the sculpture is like his study for a flying machine c.1487-1480 (Leonardo: The Machines, Carlo Pedritti, Giunti Editore, Florence-Milan, 1999).

I congratulate The Melbourne School of Design, LIDS Architecture and the School of Computer Science for their collaboration with Stelarc to produce this eight-meter high construct of aluminum, rubber and plastic, which occupies a large space on the ground floor gallery and will no doubt delight those who see it in action.

 

MIKE PARR at ANNA SCHWARTZ GALLERY

Yesterday in the main gallery at Anna Schwartz the walls were graced with large-scale, gestural paintings. Black paint on white walls. Monolithic The aftermath of a performance by Mike Parr, revealed in the video projected onto the back wall. The artist carefully climbs an A-frame ladder. His eyes are closed as he dips the brush and paints on the surface using wide, long stokes. His arm cocked and stretched as he covers a section of wall in front of him. The performance is precarious. He is painting whilst being essentially blind to the surface on which he paints. The viewer understands that the darkness within his closed eyes is demonstrated by externalizing the blackness that forms a direct contrast to the whiteness of the wall. A binary, black, white. I wondered briefly if this was a commentary on race or something else. Perhaps a attempt to draw them together in harmony. A spiritual endeavor. Something too about the mind’s eye - what we see or imagine within our psyche. It was a visceral experience for me as the movement of the camera and the ensuing movement of his performance created a kind of vertigo that I imagined the artist too must have been experiencing in his temporary blindness on that potentially unstable ladder. He could fall. But didn’t. In the end I projected my own idea of the whole installation. It was for me a commentary on the void created by the pandemic. A blackness that cannot be articulated. Personal, universal. I’d been working on two black drawings myself in the past few days. There is definitely something in the air

MIKE PARR: PREMATURE BURIAL/DARK MOFO

Some images remain fixed in your psyche, forever embedded like a sharp steel instrument pierced through the eye to your brain. Those images are not always about body horror as depicted in film genre, but often generated by psychological fears. One such film I saw when I was a young person and I've never forgotten was  Premature Burial (Roger Corman, 1962) in which the main protagonist Guy Carrell (Ray Millan) suffered from cataleptic attacks occasioning him to have a pulse so faint that he might be considered dead. His very real fear was that he may be buried alive. Paranoid about his predicament he constructs a coffin with what he considers fail safe devices so that he can continue to breathe whilst underground and a communication device to herald help for his obviously desperate situation. The conclusion to the film is terrifying.

When I heard that Australian performance artist Mike Parr intends to have himself buried alive beneath the bitumen below Macquarie Street, Hobart on 14 June this year as part of Dark MOFO I immediately thought of Premature Burial and the psychological fears that undertaking such a task may invoke. Of course it's not the same because Parr will be interred in a steel container measuring 4.5 x 1.7 x 2.2m. It will contain a fan forced air supply and he will have water, but no food, a meditation stool and sketching materials.

Parr will be underground for three days and as such immediately invokes Christian scripture, especially Corinthian 15:4 that states Jesus Christ was 'raised on the third day'. Contentious always is whether Christ was dead and raised up by God or whether he was still alive when placed in the tomb and walked out of his own volition having survived his ordeal on the cross. Parr's interrment evokes this idea of death and resurrection and that other political word 'internment' which refers to those refugees interned in substandard accommodation in Australian detention centers with little to do except ponder their dire situation. Parr who will be alive underground as the traffic passes over him creates an interesting proposition since we, the general public will not be able to see what he is actually doing and as such will draw upon our own possible fears of claustrophobia even though Parr is adept at remaining still and controlling his mind. We really cant help projecting our own anxiety onto others.

Performance artists use their own bodies as art material and rely on the audience witnessing their performance. In this case those present will only see Parr's entry into the underground encasement and his departure from it. I'm almost certain that Parr's entrance and exit will be surrounded by the spectacle of the audience, which may be considered part of the performance.

Parr addressed the absence of the artist's body in relation to an artwork early in his career in his performance Dream 2 (The Lights of Empedocles) 1982 he installed a blue chair from his artwork Parapraxis 1 in the bedroom of a friend and turned the blue light it on and off by remote control, suggesting simultaneusly the artists presence and absence.

We live in a society that generally does not freely discuss death, so in this sense Parr's performance is timely in that it asks us to contemplate our own death and burial. I won't go into it here but I can't help but think of other 'heroic' males in the public eye such as Todd Sampson and his Body Hack documentaries in which he pushes the boundaries of what the body can do. It will be interesting to see some of the discussion around Parr's performance. I for one look forward to it.

Julie Clarke (c) 2018