Experimenta Social #27: Stelarc on Fleshy, Fractal & Phantom Bodies / Part 1: Presentation

Speaker: Stelarc With Guest Host: Emma McRae, Experimenta Board Member Wednesday 19 June 2019 at ACMI X Studio Experimenta Social #27 presents Australia’s most innovative performance artist, Stelarc. Exploring the intersection of technology and the human body, this special in-conversation event discusses how embodiment, agency and even aliveness become problematic in a time of circulating and fractal flesh. The human body is increasingly navigating spaces from nano-scales to virtual non-places, stretched beneath and beyond its skin and the local space it inhabits. We live in a world of floating signifiers, in which the body, Stelarc tells us, experiences itself as a hollow body, with an extruded self — an experience of intense emptiness that is an inevitable outcome of an age of excess. Stelarc’s practice demonstrates that, in this flickering world between presence and absence, between digital and biological time and space, the body can only resort to performing with a posture of indifference. ________________________________________ Stelarc is an artist who interrogates the limitations of the human body and its augmentation with technology. He has visually probed and acoustically amplified his body. He has used prosthetics, robotics and biotechnology to explore alternate anatomical architectures. In 1996 he was made an Honorary Professor of Art and Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University and in 2002 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by Monash University. In 2010 he was awarded the Ars Electronica Hybrid Arts Prize. In 2015 he received the Australia Council’s Emerging and Experimental Arts Award. In 2016 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Ionian University, Corfu. His artwork is represented by Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne. www.stelarc.org ________________________________________ Experimenta Social is a series of talks, discussions and demos designed to provide proximity to some of Australia’s most adventurous contemporary artists, researchers and creative technologists. This artist-led series is curated by Experimenta Media Arts explores practices at the nexus of art and technology, science, culture and design. You will hear from artists sharing their latest projects and researchers presenting projects that grapple with the concerns of our time. Beyond inconsequential debates over the role of media arts in a post-media world, Experimenta Social will combine activated audiences drawn from contemporary art, social research, electronic art and non-professional spheres for lively debate and discussion. Free drinks and refreshments are available. Experimenta Social is a free event, taking place every third Wednesday of the month. www.experimenta.org/experimenta-social Experimenta Social is presented in partnership with ACMI X, and supported by Marc Besen AC and Eva Besen AO. Video by Light Works Studios www.lightworks-studios.com