Stelarc and Orlan in the Middle Ages

Abstract

As individuals, we eat into culture, continually oscillating between primary, natural and necessary acts, as, simultaneously we consume and ingest our identities. (Elspeth Probyn, Carnal Appetites) As performers of body-based art in the context of (predominantly Western) fin de steele postmodern culture, Orlan and Stelarc have all of the past and future of body transformation techniques potentially available for reinscription and reconfiguration. Perhaps this is what engages so many of us: the simultaneous working through of several layers of historical and cultural meanings about the body and its limits. Interwoven with contemporary media and postmodern themes are statements that come from an earlier, Cartesian, modernity, while the performances themselves, we will argue, bear distinctly medieval characteristics.