Marta Ostajewska
BODY & TECHNOLOGY— CONVERSATION WITH STELARC

M: Body and technology are at the centre of your art. What is more important for you: body or technology?

S: I don’t see them separately anymore. We cannot imagine the body construct as purely biological. All kinds of technological devices are now being used and we can remotely communicate using wireless devices. We function not only offline as biological bodies, but more continuously online as our phantoms, so I really don’t make any separation between the body and technology. We seamlessly and continuously slide from the actual to the virtual.

The earlier sensory deprivation and suspension performances were not about empowering the body, but rather the opposite: they exposed the body’s inadequacies. They generated a desire to augment the body with prosthetic and robotic extensions. There is no linear trajectory from the bodily to the technological to the computational. I don’t begin with performances of physical difficulty and then progress to the machinic or robotic art and then finally to the virtual. There was an oscillation of concern.

With the incorporation of technology, there was always interest in the biological body. And there was always an interest in virtuality. The first performative gestures resulted in three films of the inside of my body. Inside my lungs, stomach and colon. That was before the first suspension events. I used technology and medical instrumentation before the sensory deprivation events and the suspension performances, which began in 1976. In 1976 the engineering of the Third Hand commenced. In 1980 I began performing with the Third Hand at the same time as I was still performing the body suspensions. There’s always this kind of overlapping and oscillation of concern. Of the physical, of the phenomenological, of the machinic. The digital is still the realm of the physical. And to be an intelligent agent you need to be both embodied and embedded in the world.

As a performance artist what is meaningful is not just to have an idea. Ideas are easy, what is difficult is to perform them. You have to actualise those ideas physically and that’s my performative strategy: my ideas can only be authenticated by my actions. It is not about illustrating your ideas.

M: It looks like your projects are very complex. You work on several layers while combining virtuality and technology with performance art.

S: Well, some performances are physical difficult and others are technically complex. Having said that, I really admire simple gestures, minimal acts, and site-specific performances. It’s just how my own interests have unfolded along multiple trajectories, trying to incorporate the bodily, the machinic, and the virtual in different kinds of permutations and combinations. So it is not merely about complexity. Sometimes the ideas are clear and minimal, but the performance might require instrumentation, computational systems, and other kinds of machines or robotics to perform these ideas.

The performance at Cricoteca in Krakow (October 2023) could be characterized purely as a sound performance. The title of the performance was Sculpting Sound. Sound is compressed air. Sound should not only elegantly enter your ears. Sound should vibrate your skin, so the sound was quite intense. This was not only sculpting sound but also sculpting space. The sound was both analogue and digital. Amplified heatbeat (ECG), muscle signals (EMG) and breath accompanied the Sensor Bracelet sounds generated by their sound chips. The choreography of arm and body motions composed the sounds of the performance. There was also an interplay between the physical body and the projected camera images on the large screen behind the body.

M: You work with the concept of the body as a physical sculpture and use terms such as body obsolete, outdated body. Should this obsolete body be updated the way we update computers?

S: This is not about promoting a transhumanist discourse. In other words, these projects and performances are not about enhancing the body or updating the body in that sense, but rather experimenting with alternative anatomical architectures. What does it mean to have a third hand, or an extended arm, or a six-legged walking machine, or an ear on your arm or an operational sculpture inside your stomach? I don’t see these projects as enhancements but again, experiments in different kinds of anatomies.

M: Can I ask you about your educational background? You’re a performance artist, but you are working strongly with the physical aspects of the world: the body as a sculpture, and the sound as a material of the installation. You are ‘sculpting’ the sound.

S. Well, I did study sculpture, but I was kicked out of art school with only a certificate. The way that I was approaching sculpture was not casting, not welding, not carving, and not molding. I was creating helmets that altered your binocular perception, constructed a sensory helmet and an immersive sensory compartment. So sculpture as wearable and immersive and operational. At that time, it wasn’t considered sculpture. What I was doing was not following course requirements, so I was not selected to complete my fourth year.

I thought I would be studying architecture. I was admitted into the School of Architecture at Melbourne University. But I decided to quit after a few months. I imagined architecture as going to be more experimental, designing interesting buildings, but the first year course concentrated on structural analysis, on mathematics and physics and material sciences, and I was not interesting in that. But now, if you go to the Bartlett School of Architecture or the Architectural Association in London, the AA, their first year incorporates 3D printing, 3D modelling, sensor systems and interactive systems. But when I was a student, studying architecture it was nothing like this.

I don’t have a Degree. I don’t have a Master’s. I don’t have a PhD. It was disappointing not being able to continue with my art studies because I had the idea that I wanted to be an artist, although I didn’t understand what that really meant. At the time I thought, I’ve studied Western art and Western philosophy, so perhaps I should experience an Oriental country. And because Japan was high tech, I decided to move to Japan, not knowing really much about the culture and how I would manage. I initially taught English but fortuitously I was able to get a job teaching Art. I remained in Japan for 19 years.

“Involuntary Body / Third Hand”, Yokohama 1980, Diagram Stelarc

M: Do you speak Japanese?

S: Only conversational Japanese. I didn’t formally study it, and all my Japanese artist friends wanted to practice their English. As I became acquainted with some robotics engineers, I assisted them by correcting the English in their research papers. So, I found myself actually communicating a lot in English with my Japanese friends and the Japanese robotics engineers I met. And not practicising my Japanese.

It’s really interesting because I do understand some Japanese. I can pronounce it correctly. Japanese is a monosyllabic language, so it’s easy to speak. Of course, to read and write is a different story. There is Hirigana and Katakana but Kanji is the most challenging to learn. You need about 2000 Kanji to be reasonably literate in Japanese. And if you are a gaijin, people don’t want to listen to you, even if your pronouciation is good. Any foreigner in Japan is called a gaijin. Whether you are a Westerner, or a Korean or a Chinese, you are a gaijin. It never bothered me at all.

M: Conversation with a native speaker is always a big challenge. It is a constant sculpting of matter, not only linguistic matter but also cultural differences in a new place.

And how do you work with a new space? Is place a partner for you or just a stage on which you perform?

S: There were a number of site-specific performances in Japan. A space not only the visual relationships but the circumstantial situations. Next year I will be collaborating with an emerging young artist, Anika Gardner. I was invited to the Palmer Sculpture Biennial outside of Adelaide. It’s a really beautiful outdoor location, mountainous and littered with interesting rock formations. This project is very much a site specific work. The idea is to make a prosthesis for the rock using a pneumatic rubber muscles and a steel exoskeleton. These muscles will be 2.5 metres long and will be positioned over the rock. There will be also metal strips that the rubber muscles are pulling, with steel tendons. What is being created is a kind of musculature for the rock. When you inflate them with air, they will expand and contract. The idea of the Rock Prosthesis is to generate a sense of aliveness. The inanimate rock, this primal material will be animated by its musculature and exoskeleton.

Many of the suspension performances were also site specific. The early performances were indoors in private gallery spaces, such as in the Maki, Tamura and Tokiwa Galleries. After I had suspended my body in different positions – horizontally, vertically, obliquely – I had the idea that instead of just suspending the body, can the body be counterbalanced by a ring of rocks, can the body be suspended within a tensegrity structure, can the body be spinning, or can the body be propelled machinically?

Those ideas led to series of outdoor performances. Suspended from a tree or on an outcrop of rocks by the seaside. And in Mexico City inside a large circular space of lava rock. I was suspended and spinning above these rock formations. As well as suspensions in natural landscapes, there were two very public performances – one over East 11th Street in New York, and suspended 60 metres high above the Royal Theater in Copenhagen All of these performances were imagined and visually framed. The body as an object, amongst other objects in varying spaces and situations.

With the Prepared Tree Suspension, the body was not hung just from the branches. It took several days to find a tree that had the appropriate branch structure suitable to suspend the body. And then I decided to make the tree visually more unstable. We spent several days exposing the roots of the tree so people could see the tree, the branches and its roots. The roots mirroring the branches. When I was suspended, the cables from my hooks went over the forks in the branches and the cables were tied to the roots. The body was suspended from the roots, not from the branches. It created a circular line of tension. The skin was stretched, the cable was tight and then connected to the roots of the tree.

With the City Suspension, when I was suspended 60 metres above the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, I told the photographer to frame an image of the body with the sculpture on the building. I wanted to capture the relationship of the body with this mythological chimera, to be included relative to the urban architecture of the theatre and sky. In each site-specific hanging there has always been careful framing of the body, which images its relationship with other objects, spaces and situations in which the action takes place.

“Seaside Suspension: Event for Wind and Waves”, Jogashima 1981, Photographer Ichiro Yamana

M: The relationship between the body and the site is significant to you. How do you choose a specific place?

S: The Seaside Suspension, was realized on an outcrop of rocks approximately 300 metres from the shore. The body was suspended side-on, looking towards the horizon. A few fishing boats went by during the performance. The only people who witnessed the performance, aside from the small group of people assisting, were a group of fisherman. They were fishing before we arrived, they kept fishing during the performance and were still fishing when we left.

When we started preparing for this performance, the water was up to our waists. But as preparations progressed it got increasingly windy and the tide came in. During the suspension the body as splashed with waves crashing on the rocks below. It made it difficult to cut the body down. And at the end of the performance it was necessary to wade back to shore, to extract the hooks from my body.

With indoor performances, often video projection is used. Again, with the Sculpting Sound performance, there was a large screen behind my body, counterpointing the physical presence of the body with the projected virtual or video choreography.

„Propel: Body on “Propel: Body on Robot Arm”, DeMonstrable / Autronics, Perth, 2015 Photographer: Steven Alyian

Switching occurred between 3 cameras. The ceiling mounted camera, the front camera that generated video feedback and the camera on the LHS Sensor Bracelet which generated close-up images of my the 3D printed headset, my hands and the electrodes visible on my right arm. The switching was synched to the body choreography. I could monitor the images and improvise interesting combinations of physical body action and projected images. The performance in Cricoteca was not so technically complex because I could only bring some small instruments with me to Poland – two Sensor Bracelets and the 3D printed Headset. Nontheless the concept of sculpting the sound and the space was conceptually interesting.

In the past I have performed with industrial robot arms with video cameras attached as end effectors. The industrial robot is programmed to pan and tilt and rotate around the body and zoom in and zoom out, creating an even more interesting cinematic choreography of projection. Especially when the robot arm was able to do continuous wrist rotation looking down on the body.

M: In addition to advanced technology, you use basic elements: water, earth, air. You sculpt sound, you float between the earth and the sky, you fly.

S: Flying is not an appropriate word to use but certainly the body is suspended. The meaning of the word ‘suspended’ is literally being between two states – between the gravitational pull and the information thrust. Words such as floating and flying are too evocative, symbolic or metaphorical, and I don’t conceptualise or structure my performances in that kind of way.

M: When I look at the documentation of your suspensions, especially those in natural spaces, I find a lot of metaphors there.

S: There is a distinction to be made. I certainly accept that art should always be open to interpretation. But if you ask an artist what his intentions are or what his interests are, he has the right to distance himself from these interpretations. Of course, someone may say: this action looks like a shamanic action or a ritual. However, for me these words are totally inapplicable in terms of my concept of the body as a sculptural object amongst other objects. I am very interested in philosophy that is a flattened ontology, such as OOO (Object-Oriented Ontology) and Actor Network Theory (ANT). There’s no hierarchy of the human – a body, a body, a rock, a microbe, an algorithm and slimve for example. These are all interactive components of equal value. It can be argued that the suspension events are not about anthropomorphizing, about rituals or shamanistic actions. That’s not what is meaningful. In the Seaside Suspension, the body, the wind, the waves, the outcrop of rocks all equally contribute to the visual and performative act.

What is interesting about Graham Harman’s idea of an object? Whenever I spoke about the body – not as an object of desire, but as an object to be redesigned – it was met with a lot of criticism. Because I was not talking about the body as a subject. Perpetuating a Cartesian split. So for some reason, for most, the body as an object is not an adequate concept. I really like Graham Harman’s alternative definition of an object. That an object cannot be reduced to its smallest parts, reductively, or evaluated by its relations or the effects of its actions. An object is rather something that is inaccessible, that withdraws from the human and other objects.

The body cannot be reduced to the mere scientific study of its molecules, tissues, and muscles. It cannot be reduced to its components, nor only to its relations. It is something different. Graham Harman extends the Physicist and Philosoper, Sir Arthur Eddington’s idea that there are 2 kinds of tables – the scientific table and the manifest table. A scientific table is not a physical table, it is primarily an empty space of vibrating atoms. The manifest, phenomenological table is experienced as solid. We can write on it, we can eat from it and we can put things on it. Harman introduces a third table. It is neither a scientific table nor a substantial table, but something other. I find this sensitizes us to objects and the body considered as an object is not being reductive at all. It is certainly not a Heideggerian object, technology that is “ready-to-hand”.

M: The body is an object, but also an object that experiences, an empirical body. You are putting the body in the trauma through the pain. But you’ve already made it clear that this isn’t about a shamanic experience or ritual, it’s more than that.

S: Well, when you inflict pain on the body, you are making the body intensely aware of itself. We function usually as “absent bodies” – until we have feel sick, have an accident or do yoga. When we begin to address subjectively painful experiences, we must also consider philosophical assertions, such as Wittgenstein’s, that we are not necessarily in the best position to analyse our own pain, or cultural and social differences in how we experience and treat that pain. And in some cultures, pain is simply a process resulting from rituals such as scarification or neck stretching, or from various types of body modifications in sadomasochistic communities. Pain is directly coupled to pleasure. However, in our Western society, pain is treated purely medically. If you have a headache, you take aspirin. If you have sore muscles, you rub cream into your muscles. If you have back pain, you get an injection. We cannot conveniently locate painful experiences inside the human body any more than we can conveniently situate thinking inside your head.

M: Do you use pain in your artistic work?

S: I don’t.

”Amplified Tension”, Tenjo Saiki, Tokyo 1979, Photographer Takayuki Ozawa

M: What I mean is putting the body into a traumatic state during artistic action.

S: Pain is not the subject of the performance. The subject of the performance is the body suspended in space in relation to other objects or in other situational or architectural settings. Visually, the body is unplugged from its gravitational grounding. Why is the body suspended? Because I am disconnecting it from the ground. On the other hand, the body is not in zeroG, so the stretched skin constitutes a kind of gravitational landscape. The question is what it means to be suspended in a gravitational field. Pain is not the subject of it. As a performance artist, you must accept the physical consequences of your ideas. In your own performances, if you want to keep your balance on the edge of a high structure, there is a risk of falling. Of instigating an accident. There is an inherent danger because you are putting your body in an unnatural relationship to its normal grounding and relationships. But in positioning the body precariously, you create tensions and unexpected possibilities and perhaps empathy in your audience.

“Stomach Sculpture”, Fifth Australian Sculpture Triennial, NGV, Melbourne 1993, Photographer Anthony Figallo

The most difficult performance for me was not one of the suspensions, but the Stomach Sculpture. An object that, inside the stomach it was designed to open and close, extend and retract, it had a flashing light and a beeping sound. The body as a site not for a psyche but simply for a sculpture. Inserting the sculpture into my stomach, through the esophagus, was extremely problematic. The gagging experience and queeziness resulted in the body feeling unwell. The body wanted to throw up. There is this combination of painful experience, but also of feeling really sick that makes you uncomfortable. It was the most difficult performance for me and the only one after which I had to remain in a clinic overnight for observation as there was some bleeding from the scraping of the esophagus and because of a kind of post-operative trauma. As for the suspensions, I did not need any medical assistance or treatment for all those actions. I was able to treat myself by simply by changing the small Band-Aids over the insertion points and keeping the wounds sterile. The Ear On Arm, surgically constructing an ear on my arm did result in a dangerous infection. I almost lost an arm for an ear.

You can’t evaluate the action, its complexity, or how physically difficult it was by simply looking at a photographic image or video documentation. What is important is not the painful experience, but actualizing an idea. I never undertook a performance to experience pain, but these actions were physically challenging. A woman doesn’t get pregnant to feel pain, but childbirth is a painful experience. It is somewhat similar with my performances. Making an idea a reality is about accepting its physical consequences. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes it’s technically difficult. Sometimes it’s more medically problematic, like the Stomach Sculpture. And sometimes it can be potentially dangerous, like being attached to the end of an industrial robot arm in the Propel performance.

The most dangerous performance was not being suspended by hooks 60 metres high above the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, but being attached to the end of an industrial robot arm. Of course, we programmed this three-metre robot. We fully tested the program. However, if there would have been some glitch in the program that we did not notice or there was a power failure, the robot would return to its default position as quickly as possible and taking the shortest possible route. It could smash the body against a wall or a concrete floor. It was really difficult to get permission to use this robot. The company understandably did not want to take responsibility. There is usually a barrier around the robot that cannot be crossed while it is operating within its task envelope. We could precisely program the position/orientation, the trajectory and the velocity of the body within the warehouse space. I could only get permission to perform with the robot for 30 minutes because of the perceived danger.

M: In this context, what effect does the passage of time have on the performer’s body condition? Have you noticed that age changes the way you work with your body?

S: Until now, not discernibly. Obviously, a younger body is naturally fitter and more flexible, and perhaps more foolish. In 2012, 23 years after the last suspension in 1989, I did another suspension performance, the Ear On Arm Suspension, even though I couldn’t imagine doing it again. I thought I had exhausted the aesthetic possibilities in the previous 27 suspensions. So at that time, I was able to do something that I did many years ago. The performance outcome was successful. I’m sure there will be some adjustments in the future. But as an artist, you don’t retire, like people who have a 9 to 5 job, at the age of 63 or 65. For artists, writers, philosophers, and poets it is different. But for dancers, gymnasts, and athletes their peak performance is between 16 and 18 years old, sometimes a little younger, sometimes a little older. At the age of 35, only a few really good sports men and women continue their careers, but athletically your life is over. A dancer can transition to being a choreographer. With aging there is the possibility for a change of career path.

“ReWired / ReMixed”, Radical Ecologies, PICA 2016, Photographe Steven Alyian

I continue to perform and until now, and I am 77 years old, I have not had any physical problems that would prevent me from doing what I wanted to do. During the Rewired Remix performance in 2016, I performed continuously for five days, six hours a day. I was standing, tethered, all this time, without rest, until the six hours were over. I performed that a few years later in Europe with a live streaming between three cities. So far there have not been any physical impediments. However, as bodies get older they fatigue more quickly. They’re not as flexible. They may have some other kinds of health problems. When that happens, I’ll manage otherwise with alternative possibilities.

M: I think that the world of performance art is different than the world of dancers or athletes. They are expected to have a perfect body. This perfection is something they work towards. As performers and artists, we work with body imperfections. We touch and cross boundaries that also change with age and everything that happens to our bodies.

S: I agree, that is an excellent observation. A performer’s body, unlike a dancer’s body, does not have to be slim, nor does it have to be as trained and fit or skilled in a particular activity. There are not the same kinds of social and artistic expectations.

M: There is beauty in imperfection. And we work with these imperfections.

S: That’s true. Performance artists can be very different body types. But for some athletes size can be an advantage, such as with Sumo Wrestling in Japan. This sport requires massive bodies, that can assert their physical materiality. There is this crude colliding of bodies. You can then appreciate the beauty of a large body, its physical, substantial materiality – and admire, in addition its flexibility and agility. Interestingly, sumo wrestlers, because they’re so highly valued in Japanese society, might marry an acttractive actress. That is indicative of the status of the large body in Japanese sport.

M: It is very interesting how differently formed bodies play different roles and fulfil different expectations. They are formed and used just like sculptural material. None of these forms is unnecessary, each can be aesthetic and functional. However, attempts to shape the body often end in failure.

It is similar in sports and art, in both fields there is a very strong issue of success and failure in the context of the achievements of bodies. You get to the Olympics, you take part in the Biennial or you don’t. You often say that most of your projects are failures. How do you understand this?

S: Oh, I can assert that I’ve made a career out of being a failure. What I imagine is never truly the outcome. Many projects I wanted to implement are still at the concept level, never been completed – and some never even started. The Exoskeleton six-legged robot could be more sophisticated. The process and outcome of some of the suspension performances had to be adjusted or completely changed. The Copenhagen suspension was from a large crane but originally the body was supposed to be suspended from a helium inflated balloon. And some of the interactive installations have been limited by expertise and funding available.

“Exoskeleton”, Hamburg 1997, Photographer Igor Skafar

But my definition of art is the slippage that occurs between the intention and the outcome, incorporating the unexpected and the accidental. Certainly the performances are structured, but not scripted. There is always a necessity to improvise. There is no requirement for a narrative or a blueprint in performance art. Whereas in conventional theatrical performance there’s a script, a particular way to perform it, a certain skill in communication with an audience. A theatrical performance is structured for the audience. An audience is the least of my concerns.

In fact, for many of my performances, there was no invited audience as such. My last performance, Sculpting Sound, was certainly a very acoustical and visual performance and there was a large invited audience. But it was not necessarily enjoyable to experience and some people did leave because of the intensity of sound.

Usually, a performance takes place in a gallery space. I consider it as a kind of body installation that lasts over a long period of time. Visitors can come and go. Some stay for a few minutes, others for 20 or 30 minutes, and others come back later in the day. And if it lasts all day, there are only a few people in the gallery at any given time. In the case of performance art, there is no need for an audience, and if there is one, it might be by selected invitation or it might be completely incidental, like the Seaside Suspension or the NY Street Suspension. If an invited audience appears, as during a festival or at Cricoteka, it should be emphasized that the performance was not constructed for the audience. You are not there to entertain. You are there to actualize a idea. Not to illustrate it but to experience it. That’s the difference.

M: Can we agree that failure in performance art isn’t really a failure because we don’t have that ultimate goal that we need to achieve? The most important goal is experimentation and the process itself.

S: That is the alternative way of framing it. Value judgements like success and failure can not be easily applied, if at all, to performance art. Because the process can unfold in its own time, with its own rhythm. And yes, there is not necessarily a goal, a specific direction, or an outcome that is to be achieve. There is no right or wrong way of performing, of making art. Some performances can be more conceptual and minimal, some excessively physical, some technologically complex, some messy, some pornographic and some even dangerous. Yes, ideas might initiate a performance but what is important is what happens between intention and outcome.

M: I would like to end our conversation today with death.

S: Death? Not today, thank you, no – ha, ha.

M: Do you think that when the biological body dies, it is the actual end? What will happen to the human body in the future? Will we defeat death and do we want to defeat it? Will we live forever thanks to new technology?

“Extended Arm”, Melbourne / Hamburg 2000, Photographer Dean Winter

“Fractal Flesh”, Telepolis, Luxemburg 1995, Diagram Stelarc

S: I don’t have any utopian ideas of perpetuating the human body. In fact it can be argued that the body has become this contemporary chimera of meat, metal and code. I don’t really like to speculate in a kind of scifi or a transhumanist way. On the other hand, we can plausibly imagine that the body’s longevity will be extended. There’s research being done on cell senescence. And if we discover how cells age and die, we might be able to reverse the process. There is a possibility of reversing the aging process, or at least stalling it. There’s also the possibility that we become this hybridized human-machine system, where some bodily organs are replaced by technological components, stem cell-grown replacements, or 3D printed parts. So we might be able to constantly renew and reanimate parts of our bodies like salamanders that can regrow their limbs if they’re damaged or cut. All of these are possibilities. But that’s why I like to talk about contingent and contestable futures. Nothing will happen of necessity. Perhaps our species will annihilate itself through some catastrophe before we develop the technologies to reverse the aging process and to meaningfully extend our lifespan. These are all possible. Or that somehow we can upload our data, generate our images, and live a much longer kind of existence as our virtual avatars. And with micro and nano scaling of sensors and robots, all technology in the future will be invisible because it will be inside the body. All of these things are possibilities, but they’re contingent. They depend on chance occurrences, human decisions, and on new technological inventions. All kinds of possibilities might occur, but they also should be contestable. A future is not a future if it not of the unexpected.

“Reclining StickMan”, 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Photographer Saul Steed

M: Would you like to live forever?

S: Well, it takes 50 years to wise up to yourself, and then you quickly deteriorate and die. So it would be good to live a little longer ha, ha. Having said that the issue is not merely an existential one but also of ontological concern. If we can engineer an artificial womb and bring to bear a healthy child, then life would not begin with a biological birth. And if we can replace malfunctioning and damaged or diseased parts of the body with replacement parts then a body might not die a biological death. Life would not begin with a birth and not end with death. The Heideggerian authentication of life with death will no longer be applicable.

M: But art will still give it meaning. What is your dream project?

S: I don’t have any dream projects. It is not the way I think. I have to be opportunistic as to possibilities that occur from unexpected funding and expertise. And I think one project generates further iterations or stimulates unexpected new ideas. I’ve always been interested in nanotechnology but had not access nor expertise in that area. The projects and performances are conceptually driven but require physical and technical realization. And I am not limited by using only a certain kind of medium. I’ve done a few artworks that require biotechnology, a number that require robotics and engineering, and a few more that involve virtual systems. But I am now working on two new projects in Paris and Barcelona. One being realized at the ISIR Lab at the Sorbonne and the other being realized by the NewArt Foundation and V2. So hopefully, next year we will be able to see the results and additional performance possibilities.

M: Thank you very much for this conversation. I wish you good luck with your new projects.

S: Thank you.

“StickMan / miniStickMan”, RMIT Gallery 2022, Video Still