Stelarc in “The Game is Up!” festival at the Vooruit



Last Thursday we went to Gent for the "The Game is Up!" festival at the Vooruit. We attended the conference of Stelarc, Fractal Flesh - Prototyped, printed and phantom bodies.

Stelarc has been extending his body through performances since the late 1960s. His performances include attaching a "Third Hand" to his body, extending himself into virtual space with a "Virtual Hand", and over 25 "suspension" events where he hung his entire body from hooks piercing his skin. Stelarc's artistic strategy revolves around the idea of "enhancing the body" both in a physical and technical manner. It originates as a polarism between the "primal desire" to defeat the force of gravity with primitive rituals and a low- tech and the hi-tech performance with the third arm and the related cybersystem. His intention in both cases is to "express an idea with his direct experience.

 

In the conference he made an overview of all his works and performances, from the "Suspension" performaces, to the "Extra Ear", passing through the famous "Third hand" or "Exoskeleton". All of them creating a complete theory, a singular perspective about body and machine, about human and cyborg:

"Simply, the body has created an information and technological environment which it can no longer cope with. This sort of Aristotelian impulse to continuously accumulate more and more information has created the situation where human cortical capacity just can't absorb and creatively process all this information. This is one of the human and technological pressures that make for the computer. It was necessary to create technology to take over what the body can no longer do. It's created a technology that far surpasses certain capabilities of itself … we've created the potential of life without humanity. The only evolutionary strategy I see is triggering an evolutionary dialectic, to incorporate technology into the body … technology, symbiotically attached and implanted into the body creates a new evolutionary synthesis, creates a new human hybrid - the organic and synthetic coming together to create a new sort of evolutionary energy."
Stelarc interviewed in Obsolete Body/Suspensions/Stelarc.

Having a  look on internet, we realized that this conference is exactly the same he gave at the Transmediale this year. That is why we have decided to reproduce the video we found in Youtube at the top of this post, where you can see part of that conference. We also have created a selection of videos about him and included in our channel in Youtube

For more info about Stelarc: http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/

For mor info about The Game is Up! festival at Vooruit: http://www.vooruit.be/reeks/25/