Stelarc, whose practice since the 1970s has explored his own physical experiences through performance and art, in conversation with contact Gonzo, investigating the human body as a medium for sharing sensation
■Outline
CCBT Meetup “Stelarc × contact Gonzo: Extended Bodies and Physical Collision”
Date & Time: February 18 (sunday) , 2024 1:00pm – 3:00pm (open 12:30pm)
Speakers: Stelarc (performance artist), contact Gonzo (performance group), Minamizawa Kouta (Professor, Keio University Graduate School of Media Design), Kai Kunze (Professor at the Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University)
Admission Free *First-come, first-served basis
Organized in partnership with the Keio University Graduate School of Media Design, “Sonic Resonance: Heart, Muscles, and Breath” is a talk featuring the performance artists contact Gonzo and Stelarc.
In a legendary career spanning over 50 years, Stelarc has interrogated alternative anatomical architectures, augmenting the body with a third hand, extended arm, six-legged walking robots, and an extra ear surgically constructed on his arm.
One of the CCBT artist fellows for fiscal 2023, contact Gonzo is known for its practice that closely, at times painfully harnesses its members’ own bodies. In March 2024, the group presents a new performance as part of its latest project, My binta, your binta// lol—roars from the skinland.
The performances by these artists from different generations have utilized personal experience and their bodies as a medium, and enabled others to vicariously experience physicality and sensations.
This talk probes what it means to share sensations through body art, and the potential for such practices, exploring Stelarc’s oeuvre that has endeavored to expand physical, cognitive, and perceptual abilities, and the new work by contact Gonzo, which attempts to share sensations of pain and physical contact with an audience.
The talk also introduces research by Keio University’s Graduate School of Media Design.
Today, as information environments continue to advance with such developments as the metaverse, and attention grows around new forms of the human body in which the physical and virtual coexist, the talk is a timely look at the body as a medium for sharing with others and extending the self.
