Fred Williams: An Australian Vision: Etchings, Drawings and Gouaches in the British Museum Book

I'm starting reading this as a reference for my master dissertation that focused on the reciprocity between technology and body that implemented as performance art'at that time, my reading of this monograph is actually just to grasped some idea on human-technology relation in performance art. I start reread this monograph weeks ago and discovered many interesting ideas. This time I see Stelarc's work as a monument of how technology could outperformed the functionality of the body. The notion of outperforming our capability as human is always interesting. The mechanism built in most of Stelarc's piece has a sense of animism. Like a beast that is greater than us'the human, the body. Is it post-humanism? I don't know, but at least through his work the co-existence between human and technology as monistic singularity is presented.

The essays written on this monograph focus on several aspect of Stelarc's works. From its media archeology to the debate on the difference between culture-nature and from the controversial Stelarc statement 'the body is obsolete' to his tendency of being masochist. Brian Massumi even wrote a 40 pages essay of the genealogy of Stelarc's works'which is amazing. A critique of Stelarc's works is also provide in this monograph. One that I found interesting is by Amelia Jones. She points out the masculinity in Stelarc work. For her, most of the work is a fantasy of control and domination. Putting the body as merely just an object. Jones sees Stelarc works in a feminist perspective that I think critical and important. This raise a question'although Stelarc argues that in this nature of feedback loop between human and technology is endless and thus the question of which in control is less meaningful'perhaps technological development in Stelarc work is indeed a fantasy of control and domination? This supported by how the looks of this technology somehow rigid and less fluid.

There is an interesting argument written by Julie Clarke on the aesthetic of Stelarc's work. Clarke theory is that looking Stelarc's work as an aesthetic practice in hostility. She argues that Stelarc willingness to lend his body as a mechanism and habitat for other unknown entities'machinery, computer and even mutational transgenic'could considered as the practice of human hostility. How Stelarc's eagerness to use his own body as the sole experiment in the context of reciprocity between human and machine is an attempt to destroy the border between subject and object argued Clarke. In this sense, Stelarc's statement on the idea of 'the body is obsolete' is applied through his willingness to use his body as medium. The body is just an object.

Somehow through Stelarc's work we shall alerted to the facts that human bodily material is appropriated, trademarked and copyrighted by biomedical corporation for their own economic purpose with or without our consent. And here, we have Stelarc'that with his consent of appropriating his body through art'try to proved that there are open possibilities for cybernetics culture that is yet to explore by the human nature without the necessity of involving economic purpose.