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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/214553
- Title
- The murmur of skin
- Author(s)
- Tofts, Darren
- Abstract
- The human condition, the novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet once wrote, is to 'be there'. Thinking in particular of the isolated characters of Samuel Beckett’s plays, the notion of presence on the stage exceeded the fictional drama of play, of acting. Like Shakespeare’s 'bare forked animal', the human body is vulnerable, alone, subject to a relentless flow of time and entropy beyond its control. Imagine, then, being hoisted four stories above a New York street, the body’s physical mobility compromised by an unforgiving system of hooks, wires and pulleys. Naked and silent, it too is there, 'anaesthetised and pacified', words carefully chosen by the artist to suggest suspension as an alternative state of being and of becoming. There in the 1985 Copenhagen City Suspension was sixty metres above the ground. Stelarc remembers how frightening the experience was, but at the same time the sensation of the body vibrating, simply occupying space.
- Publication type
- Catalogue essay
- Research centre
- Swinburne University of Technology
- Source
- Essay appeared in the catalogue for the exhibition 'Stelarc: SUSPENSIONS', Scott Livesey Gallery, Armadale, Victoria, Australia, 07-31 March 2012
- Publication year
- 2012
- Keyword(s)
- Exhibition catalogues; Performance art; Stelarc (Stelios Arcadiou) (1946-)
- Publisher
- Scott Livesey Galleries
- Publisher URL
- http://www.scottliveseygalleries.com/Exhibition.aspx?ExhibitionId=68
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2012.
- Additional information
- This essay was republished in 21.C Magazine as: Tofts, D. (2012). Stelarc: the murmur of skin. 21.C Magazine. For more information, see: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/214558
