1 JUNE - 30 JUNE 2007
OPENING THURSDAY 6PM 31 MAY
ARTIST'S TALK 4PM FRIDAY 1st JUNE [Seating is limited, please book]
EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION
ADELAIDE SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Stelarc is an iconic international Australian artist who has performed extensively in Japan, Europe and the USA. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, virtual reality systems and the Internet to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary
interfaces with the body. Internet connectivity performances such as
Ping Body and Parasite have probed notions of telematic scaling and
the engineering of external, extended and virtual nervous systems for
the body. Of his 2003 Prosthetic Head Stelarc wrote, "The aim was to
construct an automated, animated, reasonably informed and somewhat
intelligent artificial head that speaks to the person who
interrogates it. As a conversational system it requires a human user.
The head is only as intelligent as the person who interrogates it. As
the data-base increases it will become more informed and less
predictable in its responses. The artist will no longer take
responsibility for what his head says."
The Experimental Art Foundation is delighted to be able to present a
selection of Stelarc's most recent works including Blender and Extra
Ear: Ear on Arm.
Blender is a collaborative installation produced by Stelarc and Nina
Sellars. Both artists undertook liposuction operations specifically
for the purpose of this new work. The bio-materials are now housed
within Blender's industrial casing. Blender acts as an astute
signpost toward some of the more contentious issues surrounding the
blending of contemporary technology with corporeality.
Extra Ear: Ear on Arm is a surgically constructed left ear inserted
into the artist's left arm. When the lengthy procedure is completed
the ear, along with a transmitter inside Stelarc's mouth will form a
headset that is able to receive and transmit bluetooth signals.
Other works to be exhibited include Walking Head Robot, Prosthetic
Head, and Alternate Interfaces, an edited compilation documenting
other projects.
"Stelarc's ... pronouncements on the obsolescence of the body and the
need for its augmentation, with all the connotations of
techno-economic progress and social evolution they entail, can best
be heard and interpreted as provocations that are testing the limits
of the techno-deterministic discourse, a discourse in which
technology is positioned as determining the way the world develops.
They reveal the possibility, or even inevitability, of the
unpredictable, the accidental and the unknown in any developmental
trajectory." Joanna Zylinksa, "The Extra Ear of the Other: On
Being-In-Difference," Stelarc catalogue essay, EAF, Adelaide.
May-June 2007.
Stelarc is Chair in Performance Art at Brunel University West London.
He is also Senior Research Fellow at the MARCS Lab at the University
of Western Sydney. In 1997 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Art
and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. In 2002 he
was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Monash University, Melbourne. In
2005/2006 he was a recipient of a New Media Arts Fellowship from the
Australia Council. His art is represented by the Sherman Galleries in
Sydney. Artist's website:
http://www.stelarc.va.com.au
For further enquiries and to make bookings for Stelarc's talk contact
EAF Program Manager: Design & Publicity, Teri Hoskin at:
--
EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION
Director: Melentie Pandilovski
Lion Arts Centre North Terrace at Morphett Street Adelaide * PO Box
8091 Station Arcade South Australia 5000 * Tel: +618 8211 7505 * Fax
+618 8211 7323 * eaf@eaf.asn.au * Bookshop: eafbooks@eaf.asn.au *
http://www.eaf.asn.au
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