The performance artist who grew a third ear onto his arm
There’s an old saying that helps define what performance art actually is, which is helpful because… Surely there’s an absolute boatload of things that count as performance art?
I mean, music is art that’s performed? Isn’t all theatre performance art? Stand-up comedy? Puppetry? Even screen acting has to be performed, is that it? All valid points, but not quite. The best way of separating performance art from everything else is by knowing the difference between it and a performing art, which can be summed up with this one handy comparison. Cut someone doing a performing art, and they’ll bleed stage blood. Cut someone doing performance art, and they’ll bleed their own blood.
That’s the kicker here. Broadly speaking, there’s a layer of artifice to someone doing traditional theatre, film or music that isn’t there in the other option. If that sounds like a judgment on the performing arts, it’s absolutely not. If anything, it’s often a lot more palatable to see someone playing a character who’s doing disgusting things to themselves and their body rather than seeing someone like the Cypriot-Australian performance artist Stelarc do what they do.
Of course, no performance artist worth their salt is doing anything to be palatable. How uncomfortable, shocking and unforgettable what they’re doing is entirely the point. The fact that they’re often doing things they can’t take back to their bodies is the entire point of the art form, and Stelarc (Stelios Arcadiou to his mum) is arguably the best example of this. Namely, because nearly all his works come down to exploring one core philosophical question. Is the human body out of date?
It’s the reason that he once allowed his body to be controlled remotely by electronic muscle stimulators connected to the internet, why he has done several installations featuring himself literally puppeted in mid air via flesh hooks embedded in his skin. However, he could leave all of those behind. Those performances ended, and he could recover from them in his own time, preferably with some time on the couch and a box set of his choosing. Then, in 2007, he literally changed his body forever, all in the name of performance art.
It was a project over a decade in the making. In 1995, Robert Langer was in the news for incubating the world’s first artificial ear, infamously growing it on the back of a mouse. Stelarc, who had already made a name for himself as an artist and an academic, got the idea of growing a third ear for himself a year later. One that would be placed on his forearm this time, rather than his back. Over the next ten years, Stelarc went about raising the money for the procedure, one that somehow got even more complex over time.
Because, as Stelarc said, he’s got two functioning ears. The third one wasn’t for his personal use. Instead, it was something very different. As he told ABC, “This ear is a remote listening device for people in other places.” That’s right, after growing the tissue needed for the ear, inserting it under the skin and growing an ear lobe from his own stem cells, the idea was to insert a wireless microphone that would be operational at all times. Letting anyone in the world tune in and listen in on whatever was going on in Stelarc’s life at the time.
Nearly 20 years after the initial surgical procedure, this isn’t complete. The ear’s there, but due to several issues with both the technology and the fundraising (not to mention the fact that aspects of this whole project are very illegal), Stelarc hasn’t been able to go online with it just yet. Yet being the key term there. 30 years after first getting the idea for the project, Stelarc still isn’t finished and will see it through to the end.
That right there is the difference between performance art and a performing art. Unless he’s successfully pulled the wool over all our eyes, this is someone committing their real-life body to art in a way that an actor or any other kind of performer could only imagine. Best of luck to him, I say.