Skin can be a vital part of performance. For ours, skin was used to help create a sense of intimacy however performer Stelarc, uses skin in a completely different way.
Jordan’s encounter did not necessarily involve skin, unless he accidentally touched one of the audience members. Jessica’s encounter with the audience focused on using skin to skin touching to create a type of intimacy between the two people. Leanne’s encounter used touch but not specifically skin and mine, being kissing, involved touching lips. This made us begin to think of how important skin can be within performance and whether or not it creates different reactions from the audience/participant.
Skin has been used differently in performance and Stelarc is a performance artist who sticks in my mind when questioning the use of skin in performance. Whether is it intimate or not. “Stelarc has repeatedly challenged what is possible in the most complex relationship between the human and the machine” (Giannachi, 2004, p.55). This in conjunction with other research on Stelarc suggests that he is interested on focusing on the complex relationships between an number of things, however he does often use technology in his pieces. Could this be because “the computer mouse is an extension of the arm” (Giannachi, 2004, p. 1)?
Stelarc’s Ear on Arm is what I remember most about his work and this piece is a completely different use of skin in comparison to our performance.
Ear on Arm involved a series of operations that resulted in the artist having an ear underneath the skin of his arm. This ear not only hears but transmits as well. Stelarc argues that
“For me the body is an impersonal, evolutionary, objective structure. Having spent two thousand years prodding and poking the human psyche without any real discernible changes in our historical and human outlook, we perhaps need to take a more fundamental physiological and structural approach, and consider the fact that it’s only through radically redesigning the body that we will end up having significantly different thoughts and philosophies.” (N.D)
I can understand that this suggests how dedicated Stelarc is to his art, and that he truly believes that poking and re-sculpturing the body will affect the way we think and our philosophies.
This just goes to show how one aspects of a performance can be used in another to create a completely different effect. We used skin to create a reassuringly intimate encounter, whereas Stelarc believes by modifying the skin we have, we could change the perceptions of the world
Work Cited
Giannachi, Gabriella (2004) Virtual Theatres: an introduction, Oxon: Routelage
Stelarc, Extended-Body: Interview with Stelarc, Online: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/stelarc/a29-extended_body.html (Accessed 8th December 2012)