Body Debate You Both Focus

¶ … Body Debate

You both focus on the human body for your art, but show a different aspect of the body, please explain your thought process in the way you create art.

Stelarc: Simply put, modern society views the body as another machine. Something to be ripped apart and reconstructed to meet the needs of modern medicine. There no longer seems to be any concept of a soul or even concern for the inner psyche. Instead, medicine is focused on creating bodies that last forever. As I explain in my presentations, we are living in a time of the cadaver, the comatose, the cryogenic, and the chimera.

In my piece "Parasite: Event for Invaded and Involuntary Body" I show the audience how robotics are being used to replace complex body systems including arms, legs and even the heart. There are now robotic hearts that circulate blood throughout the body without producing a heartbeat. So the very fundamental definitions of life are now becoming obsolete.

Janine Antoni: While I would agree that modern society has taken the body to a different level, I don't agree that there is a lack of concern for the modern psyche. In fact, in my art I often express the overwhelming credit that the psyche along with its desires is often given. Criminals are excused from crimes against humanity simply because their psyche is disturbed. In my work "Loving Care" I sought to challenge the modern idea that woman's beauty and power fades over time and therefor signs of aging such as gray hair should be hidden. By the end of this performance, it becomes obvious the true power of a woman's psyche.

Question 2: You both have works that society has considered offensive, how do you address these criticisms?

Janine Antoni: Personally, I love the idea the I have the freedom to do some very outrageous things for the sake of art. In my work "Conduit" I presented a basic fantasy of everyone's, to pee off a skyscraper. While this is a crazy and often considered offensive idea, sometimes it is those notions that free the mind in a new way.

Stelarc: I hope that people are offended by my art. I hope that in a way people are offended at the way that science has made the human body obsolete. I want viewers to feel and think when they see me hanging from flesh hooks or be enraged when they see my "Third Ear" for perhapes it will reawaken and reanimate what seems to be a dead society.

Question 3: Where do you see art and society moving in the future?

Stelarc: While I can't really speak for art in general, I fear that society is moving further and further away from the miraculous and inspired. It seems to me that more and more emphasis is placed on how mechanical everything is and less emphasis on its actual form and beauty.