Body Installation Artist Stelarc: We Are in a Time of Circulating Flesh!

Stelarc is a world renown body installation visual artist who has pushed the boundaries with his performances for more than four decades. His art has extruded the body beyond its physical limitations and created strong reactions around the world. Though strictly speaking he doesn’t consider himself to be a transhumanist, he also doesn’t mind being labeled a transhumanist artist. Stelarc has been on my guest wish list since the very beginning of my podcast and I was very happy to interview him on Singularity 1 on 1. During our 80 min conversation with Stelarc we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: whether his first love was art or technology; the story behind his attempt to “extrude” the body beyond its physical limitations; changing his name to Stelarc; his inspiration, motivation and goals; transhumanism and the philosophically problematic value judgments of enhancement and improvement; what is art and the new mediums thereof; his 3rd ear, the misconceptions and the risks surrounding it; if the body is obsolete; his take on the technological singularity… My two favorite quotes that I will take away from this interview with Stelarc are: “I think as artists we are really in the business of generating contestable futures; possibilities that can be examined. Often they would be discarded. Sometimes they may be appropriated.” “If you want to imagine a future, any future, you have to factor the unpredictable. Otherwise it is not a future.”