Leonardo

Corporeal Mélange: Aesthetics and Ethics of Biomaterials in Stelarc and Nina Sellars's"Blender"Author(s): Julie ClarkeSource: Leonardo, Vol. 39, No. 5 (2006), pp. 410-416, 437Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20206285 .

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Corporeal M?lange: Aesthetics

and Ethics of Biomaterials in

Stelarc and Nina Sellars's Blender

fulie Clarke

-JLn this article I consider Stelarc and Nina Sellars's

2005 installation Blender alongside the works of contemporary artists who have used biomaterials in their oeuvres (although this comparison and description is not all inclusive). I argue

that, since the artists' previous artworks have engaged with the

effects of technology on human ontology, Blender may be read

as advancing some of these ideas. I propose that, although the

aesthetic of the biomaterials in the installation is consistent

with Stelarc's interest in portraying the body as a kind of land

scape, it also evokes the potent use of human or animal fat by

contemporary artists and filmmakers who alert us to the par adoxical nature of the human body, which is perceived as both

waste and as of use value. I maintain that, although the artists

used liposuction to obtain biomaterials for the installation,

Blender was not intended to provoke a discussion of cosmetic

body modification. Instead the modification they allude to is

one instigated in a laboratory, where human biomaterials are

blended and used in various biom?dical techniques. I begin by discussing the aesthetic elements of Blender and

how they intersect with some of Stelarc and Sellars's previous

artworks, then contextualize Blender in relation to particular instances in visual culture in which human biomaterials have

been utilized as a vehicle for raising provocative questions about the exploitation and commercial use value of human

bodies.

The structural elements of the Blender installation, which

metaphorically represented the human body, were a circular

Plexiglas vessel atop a vertical steel column surrounded by four

large oxygen tanks [1] (Fig. 1). Inside the hermetically sealed vessel was a corporeal m?lange of subcutaneous fat, nerves,

connective tissue and blood, extracted from Stelarc's torso and

Sellars's limbs through liposuction, as well as local anesthetic,

adrenaline, sodium bicarbonate and saline solution?chem

icals necessary for the surgical procedure. The artists in

troduced oxygen and methylated spirits (ethanol) into the

blender to aerate and prevent the biomaterials from degrad

ing (Article Frontispiece). All these substances were literally blended together to form a biochemical soup [2]. Indeed, the

artists, who have a common interest in anatomy, "collaborated

on 'Blender' to create a work that was potent, physical and vis

ceral, and that used biomaterials in

a new and interesting way" [3]. Housed within the vertical steel

column, digital sensors triggered the blades and prompted a contin

uously looped clicking sound that

suggested the rhythmic sounds of

heartbeat or blood flow, two ele

ments that have been a feature

of Stelarc's performances with ro

botics [4]. Initially the repetitive sounds caused hv the rotarv actua

tor, triggered to occur every 20 seconds, were adjusted so that

the blending occurred every 5 minutes. This allowed the

blended materials, which frothed and bubbled, to settle into

three distinct layers: partial liquids and solids (ruddy brown)

Julie Clarke (researcher), School of Art History, Cinema, Classics and Archaeology, Elizabeth Murdoch Building, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 3000. E-mail: <jjclarke@unimelb.edu.au>.

Article Frontispiece. Stelarc and Nina Sellars, Blender, installation, 2005. (Photo ? Stelarc) When the biomaterials settled overnight, distinct layers formed.

Fig. 1. Adam Fiannaca, Blender model, 2005. (? Stelarc) The Blender installation was initially visualized as a computer 3D model. This enabled an evaluation and scale of the installation, which was approx

imately 1.65 m tall, equivalent to the height of each of the artists.

?2006ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 39, No. 5, pp. 410-416,2006 411

ABSTRACT

Uontemporary artists who use biomaterials to make art

objects provide a valuable occasion for raising provocative questions about the value and use of human and nonhuman tissue in the biotechnological age. By disseminating ideas from the insular space of the

laboratory to the general public, artists are able to broach

philosophical, political, social and ethical questions that surround human ontology. The author considers the aesthetic

aspects of Stelarc and Nina Sellars's Blender installation

alongside the work of artists who assert an ethical position in their use of biomaterials.

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.81 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 09:21:34 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

^HR^^^^HPT^E|^flHS '

???u . |( t yfrw kJjfffiCS^PflW^^^^M Fig- 2- Blender, contents, 2005.

^H^H^H^^HH6^2fi^/^^^?3W^ ;?; ̂̂ "*1^ (? Stelarc and Nina Sellars.

^^^^^HHR|^KI^nS^rnBpHP**^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^BB Photo: Stelarc.) Four bottles ^^^H^^^qP^^HMB^^^^^^ ^ii^^^^lfciAMyf?^irt^^i ->i ii i- ^^^^^BH! ?^ comPresse<i ah" actuate and

^^^^^^RQj^H^^^ ^*^g?fMfl^H^|H|Hfl^H|HHH ^^^ oxygenate the material.

at the base, liquids (orange) in the mid

dle and solid yellow fats on top. The aes

thetic of these three colored layers

forming bands inside the circular, trans

parent vessel offered the most com

pelling visual aspect of the work. The

organic substances broken down into

minute forms through the blending

process provided a stratum of surfaces

and textures, evoking the reduction of

the body to its essential material elements

or its DNA (Fig. 2). Aesthetically, this biomass represent

ing an excess of bodily production ap

peared chillingly out of place in the

gallery context. Like the soupy mass that

remains when organic matter disinte

grates, disrupting the border between

the original body and the surrounding area, which it invades, the biomaterials,

although thoroughly contained, dis

turbed the boundary between the bodies

of the artists and the machine in which

their excess biomaterials were housed.

Equally disquieting was the animation

of the biomaterials by wholly techno

logical means, suggesting the complex

interrelationship formed between the

human body as raw material and the

ability of technology to reanimate and

reconfigure it into a new body. Indistin

guishable biologically from our embod

ied form, the biomass would be more

commonly associated with images of

close-up electron-microscopic views of

body tissue, dissection and autopsy, com

monplace in contemporary films or tele

vised medical dramas [5].

Positioned as it was, central and iconic

in an almost completely darkened room,

Blenders most pervasive aesthetic feature

was the image of death, as bodily materi

als were presented as inert alongside an

equally dead machine (Color Plate E). In its entirety Blender distinctly echoed

Donna Haraway's pronouncement that

"our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert" [6].

Nonetheless, the periodic blending of

the stagnant biomass did provide occa

sions for both movement and stasis.

Along with the intermittent sounds gen erated from the blender, these elements

formed a choreographic play between

the organic and inorganic, stillness and

mobility, acquiescence and resistance, si

lence and noise. In Blender as well as in

some of Stelarc's earlier performances with amplified heartbeat or blood flow,

the acoustic element formed a bridge be

tween the visual exterior and the silent

zone of the bodily interior. The outward

display of the biomaterials mirrored

the inner spectacle of normal bodily function.

The presentation of liquid and solid

states in Blender intersects with some of

Stelarc's previous experiments with soft

(tissue-engineered quarter-scale extra ear

and partial face) and hard prosthetics

( The Third Hand, Motion Prosthesis and ro

botic exoskeletons). This contrast was

particularly noticeable in the filmed

endoscopie images of Stelarc's Stomach

Sculpture (1993), which exposed a small

metal sculpture embedded within his

stomach liquids and solid stomach tissue.

Stelarc explains: "Whereas the Stomach

Sculpture was a machine inside a soft or

gan, Blenderis a machine installation con

taining a liquid body" [7]. In Blenderas well as in the Stomach Sculpture, the usu

ally hidden wet bodily interior is pre sented as a landscape to be surveyed and

mapped through its processes, flows and

energies. Nevertheless, the artist's body, so preva

lent in Stelarc's performance oeuvre and

alluded to in his Prosthetic Head instal

lation and tissue-engineered quarter-scale extra ear project, has disappeared com

pletely from Blender, in which the body of the artist, at least in its recognizable form, has been erased. In its place are

traces of his and Nina Sellars's bodies

encapsulated in a vessel that in effect re

embodies them as pure material that con

tains within it the potential for human/

nonhuman alliances. Stelarc and Sellars's

earlier work, which addressed anatomy and architectural space, is figured here

solely through the lens of subtraction.

Rather than making additions to his body with aesthetic/prosthetic devices, which

augmented his body and its performance

parameters, Stelarc in this work uses ex

traction and subtraction of biomaterials

from his body to underscore its fragile

materiality [8]. Nonetheless, in Blender, human materiality, rather than being

equivalent to its technically architectural

shield, was overwhelmed by its presence. This is relevant, for, in Stelarc's work with

prosthetics and robotics, the human body was as prominent as its technological exo

skeleton. In his recent projects, however,

human materiality is almost surpassed by

412 Clarke, Corporeal Melange

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the technology that sustains it [9]. Per

haps, though, it was the diminished pres ence of the body and its materiality in the

installation that made it more conspicu ous, rarefied and significant.

Since the primary objective of the in

stallation was to address the blending of

bodies or the technologies that enable

their blending, it is pertinent here to

refer to Creation, Sellars's 2004 collabo

ration with Iain Sweetman and Gareth

Lockett [10]. In this work, Sellars drew

three "anatomical 'skin' drawings" de

picting the Christian God, Eve and a

cherub. These were then overlaid onto a

computer-animated wire armature. Sel

lars explained: "The viewer, by moving

through the exhibition space, could ac

tivate separate anatomical animations

and sounds, creating a choreography of

anatomies and abstracted bodily sounds"

[11]. When the figures were rotated,

there was an overlap and merging of the

transparent bodies, suggesting that they could transcend their fixed boundar

ies by merging with another. In Creation

as well as Blender, transparency is the

method in which the fluidity and ambi

guity of the bodies is revealed.

A photograph of the artists taken prior to the autoclaving of their biomaterials

shows them wearing white lab coats and

holding a container of their meaty, fatty substance [12] (Fig. 3). Presenting the artists as much like butchers proudly

displaying pre-packaged prime cuts as

laboratory technicians, this photograph reveals the visual confusions that might occur between human and animal bio

materials used in medical experimenta tion, as well as between the artist and the

scientist?a distinction that is becoming eroded at a time in which the work of

BioArtists is becoming increasingly de

pendent upon scientists and laboratory technicians. The photograph alerts us

to the way in which the artists have re

contextualized their biomaterials as an

aesthetic object. Issues of contagion and abjection were

a concern in Blender, for the artists made

a point of stating on the exhibition flyer that "the body tissue has been autoclaved

for sterilization and the blender vessel

disinfected and hermetically sealed. Both

artists were blood tested prior to the sur

gical procedures" [13]. Although obvi

ous practical and ethical considerations

made this precaution necessary, this

draws our attention to the extent to which

medical bodily surveillance has not only been extended into human sexuality and

reproduction but has become an un

avoidable consequence for artists who

use biomaterials as a significant element

in their work. One of these consequences was encountered by Stelarc and Tissue

Culture and Art, who were refused per mission to exhibit the tissue-engineered ear grown from Stelarc's own body cells

until they provided a statement "that the

work does not raise ethical issues in gen eral and in particular in the biom?dical

community" [14]. Eventually the gallery curators and director allowed an ear

grown with mouse cells to be exhibited

[15]. I believe that because of this, Ste

larc and Sellars felt obliged to assure the

curators of the Tecknikunst exhibition

and the general public of the cleanliness

and safety of their biomaterials. It also al

lowed the artists to avoid the obvious eth

ical issues that would surround the use of

other human or animal biomaterials in

the installation.

According to Julia Kristeva, "It is... not

a lack of cleanliness or health that causes

abjection, but what disturbs identity, sys

tem, order ... the in-between, the am

biguous, the composite" [16]. Abjection occurred in Blender through the ambi

guity of the biomaterial composition and

our inability to recognize the substances

or perceive our bodies as simply raw ma

terial [17]. However, Sellars maintains,

There was no sense of, or intent to pro voke the abject in "Blender" though viewers will engage their own bodily ex

perience when connecting with the

work, independent from the artists' in tent. The disadvantage of psychoanalyti cally viewing "Blender" as engaging with the abject is that it implies that the bio

materials used in "Blender" were seen

simply as waste, which was never the case

[18].

Regardless, liposuction is generally un

dertaken to remove unwanted fat from

the body. Therefore, no matter how im

potent the biomaterials were rendered by their sterilization and isolation, fat, as an

aesthetic consideration and as an object in itself, was a potent reminder of its

inherent power to evoke the abject, the

undesirability of particular bodies, and

individuals considered worthless who

have been experimented upon or suf

fered under oppressive regimes. I was reminded when I saw the yellow

fatty layer that settled on the top of the

Blender biomass that at the Stutthof and

Auschwitz concentration camps, fat ex

tracted from the bodies of executed in

mates was used to make soap [19] .Joseph

Beuys acutely displayed the connection

between the furnace, extermination of

camp inmates and human body fat when

he exhibited, among other objects, "phi als of poison and electric plates with

blocks of fat" in his Auschwitz 1958 instal

lation [20]. Beuys used animal fat in

many of his installations, not only be

cause nomadic Crimean Tartars had cov

ered his body in fat to keep him warm

after his plane crashed into snow, but

because fat was "a material that was very basic to life and not associated with art"

[21]. Caroline Tisdall maintains that fat

exists in Beuys's work "as a physical ex

ample of both extremes, as a chaotic,

formless and flowing liquid when warm,

and as a defined and ordered solid when

cold" [22]. Beuys explained:

In human physiology, everything that is

ultimately hard has begun its existence

Fig. 3. The artists transferring the biomaterials into a glass bottle for autoclaving. (? Stelarc. Photo: Cameron Jones.)

Clarke, Corporeal Melange 413

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in a fluid process; this can clearly be traced back to embryology. Gradually it firms up, emerging from a fluid, gener alized motion, from a basic evolutionary principle, and that means movement

[23].

Fat infiltrates and absorbs other mate

rials and is a metaphor of transformation.

Indeed, according to Beuys, fat relates to

"inner processes and feelings" [24]. It is

in this sense that Blender enters into a

dialogue with Beuys's use of fat, for in

Blender, liquids and solids coalesce into

what could be perceived as the chaotic

embryonic state of a new body?one transformed by technological interven

tion. Beuys used fat as a material meta

phor to represent the wounded body, its

disintegration in death or the energy and

warmth produced by fat. In Show your wound (1976), he installed two heavy, coffin-like metal boxes filled with fat,

"each with a thermometer to suggest that

a warmth process continued" [25]. In his

Ohne Titel (1968), a clump of soft yellow fat melts down over the hard wooden

spindle on which it sits, inviting us to con

template the relationship between the

energy of the body and that of the spin

ning machine. In these works of Beuys, as well as in Blender, fat may be read as

both a metaphor of the absent, wounded

body and a very real manifestation of its

energy and materiality. It also shows a di

rect relationship between the body (rep resented by fat) and the technology that

manufactures and transforms it.

The relationship between the waste (d) bodies of individuals in concentration

camps and the manufactured soap dis

played in Beuys's work may also be read

into Agalma (2005), the provocative work

of the Croatian artist Zoran Todorovic,

who asked members of the public to wash

themselves with the "finest human soap" made from his own surgically removed

bodily fat [26] (Fig. 4). A desire for peace between Croatia and Serbia and an at

tempt to rejoin a community that was pre

viously severed through conflict may have

been the primary concern for the artist,

who has used part of his own body to

make contact with others. Although the

act of making soap from one's own body fat is a potent and political act, this per formance was described as

a cleansing of male within female, of cu rators within an artist, of Croats within Serbs. Zoran's body becomes telepresent, or to be more precise, it functions as a

body of love in two places at the same time: to love means "giving something that one doesn't have" [27].

The act of washing one's body with the

substance of another brings one into a

union that suggests, above all, the notion

of gift and the warmth of exchange. This

also occurs in Blender, in which fat and

other biomaterials are revealed as sub

stances that may be dispersed from one

body into another body or thing. Fat is

represented in Beuys and Todorovic's

work as symbolizing warmth and energy, but also as a reference to human sacrifice, a theme explored in David Fincher's 1999

film Fight Club. Blender intersects with

Fight Club because both set up a direct re

lationship between the human body and

its value as waste. The modified body is

absent (we do not see the bodies of those

who undergo liposuction in Fight Club, nor is there documentation exhibited of

the artists's modified bodies in Blender), and fat is presented as a partial object? what Zizek refers to as an "organ without

a body," which is reconfigured into some

thing manufactured [28]. A comparison between Stelarc and Sel

lars's representation of the human body

through its waste biomaterials and Chris

tian Boltanski's work with discarded

clothing and objects (often evoking vic

tims of the Holocaust) reveals that, al

though Boltanski reclaims the lives of

forgotten individuals by highlighting their identity and human frailty, Stelarc

and Sellars present human biomaterials

as an object abstracted and isolated from

real lives and experiences. Lori Andrews

and Dorothy Nelkin have observed, "Def

initions of the body that reduce and de

contextualize it, are what allow scientists

or biotechnology firms to extract, use,

and patent body tissue without reference

to the individual or consideration of his

or her personal desires and social needs"

[29]. Indeed, scientific research is more

often than not carried out on individuals

who have life-threatening or debilitating diseases such as cancer, AIDS and Alz

heimer's, prison inmates, or individuals

from third-world countries and nonhu

man animals [30].

However, I would argue that to present the human body through its biomateri

als or waste is to evoke those individuals

who in the past were considered refuse

prior to and after their deaths; those ex

perimented upon, or whose biomaterials

are extracted through routine medical

tests. Therefore, while Boltanski's work

recuperates the lives and memories of in

dividuals through clothing and other ob

jects considered disposable waste after

the individual's death, Blender salvages the expendable waste body through tech

nological intensification. In this sense the

artists alert us to the value of biomateri

als in our biotechnological culture as well

as the importance of human and non

human rights in medical experimenta tion, ownership of biomaterials discarded

after medical procedures, exploitation of

minority groups in the procurement of

biomaterials for research or commer

cialization, authorship and originality, and the issue of whether biomaterials

used as raw material for the construction

of artifacts can provide a valuable forum

in which to discuss these and other issues.

Nonetheless, Stelarc has said that he is

interested in the aesthetic rather than

the ethical issues that might be raised by his art. In my view it is not only the aes

thetic value of the biomaterials as pure surface and texture that warrants con

sideration but also the fact that the bio

materials have come from individuals

with a history. Stelarc's 2006 Partial Head project in

collaboration with Tissue Culture and

Fig. 4. Zoran Todorovic, Agalma, performance, 2005. (? Zoran Todorovic)

414 Clarke, Corporeal M?lange

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Art?which includes tissue-engineered

eyelids, nose, lips and chin molded from

Stelarc's own face, utilizing HeLa and an

imal cells grown over a 3D frame of an

Australopithecus aferensis skull?is an art

work that demonstrates Stelarc's interest

in the relationship between technology and human evolution rather than issues

raised by the use of HeLa cells [31].

(HeLa cells are cells removed without

permission in the 1950s from the can

cerous cervical tumor of an African

American woman, Henrietta Lacks.) Stelarc said, "What's fascinating to me is

how the folds or clumps of tissue might

grow and alter the surface form of the

facial fragments," and further, that he is

concerned with constructing a "sensuous

tissue landscape" [32]. Here too Stelarc

asserts his interest in the aesthetics of

the work, when clearly his projects attest

to the fact that he is interested in both

the artistic and pragmatic potential of

biomedicine.

By contrast, Cynthia Verspaget, who

undertook her research at SymboticA

[33], asserts an ethical position in her

use of biomaterials and raises important issues surrounding the exploitation of

individuals who do not benefit from re

search outcomes. She developed The An

archy Cell Line using her own cells as well

as HeLa cells (Fig. 5). HeLa cells are end

lessly reproduced and are used in hun

dreds of laboratories around the world,

enabling many corporations and indi

viduals to gain financial profits from their

use. Henrietta Lacks's husband maintains

that both he and Henrietta have been ex

ploited by the sale of her cells [34], hence the significance of Verspaget's foray into

producing the Anarchy cell line "as dia

logue artifice regarding issues of tis

sue ownership, lab techniques, tissue/

patent/copyrighting, the aesthetics of

the inner body and the science and so

cial/human connection" [35]. Since Stelarc and Nina Sellars could

have acquired other bodily fluids to blend together, such as blood, urine,

phlegm, excrement and seminal fluid

[36], their use of internal biomaterials

is evidence of their interest in tissue

engineering technology and transgenics.

Why would the artists undertake lipo suction to procure biomaterials for an

artwork, given the obvious discomfort

that they would experience before and

after the procedure [37] and with the full

knowledge that Orlan had exhibited fat from her liposuction in 1993 [38], if not to point to the value of biomaterials?

There are certain affinities and points of departure between the issues raised

and the presentation of biomaterials in

Blender and Orlan's exhibited reliquaries, which comprised tiny fragments of skin, fat and blood embedded within small, cir

cular, transparent containers [39]. The

fat and skin for these reliquaries were pro cured during Orlan's body sculpting in

the Reincarnation of Saint Orlan perfor mance. In that project Orlan modified

her facial features (and later, her body

contours) to conform to and critique pre

existing notions of beauty established

within the art-historical canon. I have ar

gued elsewhere that, given that Orlan

consistently used Judeo-Christian iconog

raphy in her performances, her reliquar ies intended to refer to the Christian "cult

of relics" in which the bodily parts of saints or nobility were not only revered

but also sold to provide financial support for the Church [40].

Since Stelarc and Sellars emphasize the

value of human waste, there is a certain

affinity here. However, the value that they

place on their biomaterials is in its po tential for acquiescence, compatibility and exchange between individual bod

ies [41]. It is inconsequential that the subcu

taneous fat removed from Stelarc and

Sellars's bodies provided an aesthetic out

come for their physical shapes, for they

explained that the liposuction was merely a necessary "means to an end," affirming that it was the aesthetic of the artwork

that concerned them rather than body modification. Stelarc said, "What was se

ductive was to see this not as body sculpt

ing, but body subtraction?to enable a

physical and conceptual blending" [42]. While this subtraction appears to be an

inversion of Stelarc's longtime practice of making additions to his body through prosthetic devices, this subtraction from

his body paradoxically allowed an addi

tion to Sellars's biomaterials and vice

versa.

The physical blending of biomaterials from one person into the image of an

other was previously undertaken by Marc

Quinn, who created Lucas (2002), a por trait of his newborn child, by pulverizing the placenta and pouring the biomateri

als into a mould of his son's head. Quinn

explains, "The raw material has meaning ... the placenta is a piece of flesh where

there's this ambiguity. Is it the mother, or

is it the child? There's this crossover be

tween the two" [43]. Quinn's insight that

the placenta is a liminal object, one that

contains the substance of both mother

and child and creates ambiguity between

the bodies, echoes the uncertainty that

we experience when we consider that

in Blender there is no way of differentiat

ing between Stelarc and Sellars's bioma

terials.

In the biotechnology age, in which var

ious biomaterials are stored in blood or

tissue banks and used by industry to re

search diseases and develop lucrative cur

ative medicines, human body parts are

perceived in terms of their use value.

However, Andrews and Nelkin argue that

the "body is more than a utilitarian ob

ject: it is also a social, ritual, and meta

phorical entity, and the only thing many

people can really call their own" [44].

However, we could argue whether this

is true, given that Catherine Waldby has

stated that in our current situation, "all

? ? *i*-"vw-.. t*3*' ft4** '. v- \ ' "

\ "^ *** ' ''

Fig. 5. Cynthia Verspaget, Heart Shaped Anarchy Cells embraced by Verspaget's blood cells, 2000.

(? Cynthia Verspaget)

Clarke, Corporeal M?lange 415

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subjects are potential standing reserves

and sources of biovalue, raw materials

for biotechnological projects" [45]. In

Blender, however, the biomaterials from

two bodies were conceptually repre sented as one. Coagulated, blended and

homogenized, the biomaterials sub

tracted from each artist's body make

problematic any notion of an individual

body unaffected or untainted by the

other, in a society in which the biomate

rials of a human or nonhuman animal

may be absorbed, transplanted into or

grafted onto another. Indeed, the tech

nical reanimation and blending of the

biomaterials in Blender alert us to the po tential of biological materials to be re

configured, reused and revitalized by biomedicine. However, any idea of inti

macy suggested by the intermingling of biomaterials in Blender was sanitized by the fact that the fluids were mixed out

side the body in a disinfected chamber.

This new body then, contained within

and protected by a technological exo

skeleton, is hygienic, controlled and un

der surveillance.

References and Notes

1. Blender was installed at the Meat Market Project Space, North Melbourne, Australia, for the exhibi tion Tecknikunst in August 2005. It was co-curated

by Kristen Condon and Amelia Douglas.

2. Stelarc and Sellars initially worked with the notion of constructing an artificial circulatory system.

3. E-mail from Nina Sellars, 6 February 2006.

4. The sound for Blenderwas designed by Rainer Linz. The installation was engineered by Adam Fiannaca.

5. Examples are "Crime Scene Investigation" and "House."

6. Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1991) p. 152.

7. Conversation between the writer and Stelarc on 28 January 2006.

8. Conversation with Stelarc at the Transit Bar, Fed eration Square, Melbourne, Australia, 22 August 2005.

9. See, for instance, the image of the tiny tissue

engineered quarter-Scale Extra Ear rotating slowly in a bioreactor.

10. Creation was exhibited at BEAPworks in 2005.

11. E-mail message from Sellars, January 2006.

12. Stelarc showed me this photograph at our meet

ing at the Transit Bar, Federation Square, Melbourne, in August 2005.

13. I took this information from the Blender exhibi tion flyer.

14. Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, "The Art of the Semi

Living and Partial Life?XA Scale," in Art in the Biotech Era, exh. cat. (Adelaide, Australia: Adelaide Inter national Arts Festival, 2003) p. 7.

15. TheExtraEar: '?Scalev/as exhibited at the National

Gallery of Victoria, Australia, in 2002.

16. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjec tion, Leon S. Roudiwz, trans., European Perspectives series (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1982) p. 4.

17. I walked into the installation while Stelarc was

emptying what I thought was vomit into the vessel.

18. Nina Sellars, e-mail response to the author, 6 Feb

ruary 2006.

19. See John J. Michalczyk, ed., Medicine, Ethics and the Third Reich: Historical and Contemporary Issues

(Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1994).

20. See Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1979) p. 21.

21. Tisdall [20] p. 72.

22. Tisdall [20] p. 72.

23. Heiner Stachelhaus, Joseph Beuys, David Britt, trans. (New York, London, Paris: Abbeville Press, 1991) p. 70.

24. Tisdall [20] p. 72.

25. Tisdall [20] p. 215.

26. See Robert Ayers's review of Todorovic's work shown at Glasgow, Scotland's 2004 National Review of Live Art festival (17-21 March 2004), <www.

newmoves.co.uk/PageAccess.aspx?id=278> (accessed 7 June 2006).

27. National Review of Live Art Midland, Midland, U.K., 2005, <www.cityofswan.com/nrla/zoran.htm> (accessed 6 November 2005).

28. Slavoj Zizek, Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and

Consequences (London and New York: Routledge, 2004) p. 173.

29. Lori Andrews and Dorothy Nelkin, Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age (New York: Crown, 2001) p. 7.

30. See George J. Annas, "The Changing Landscape of Human Experimentation: Nuremberg, Helsinki, and Beyond," in Michalczyk [19] pp. 106-125.

31. Julie Clarke, "Face-Off," interview with Stelarc, in Meanjin: Portraits of the Artist ??, Nos. 1-2,163-169 (2005), double issue edited by Ian Britain.

32. Clarke [31] p. 167.

33. SymbioticA is located in the Department of

Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia.

34. Andrews and Nelkin [29] p. 33.

35. Cynthia Verspaget, "The Anarchy Cell Line," 1994-2006, Westnet Pty. Ltd. <http://members.

westnet.com.au/moth/t%5Fart/> (accessedJanuary 2006).

36. Artists who have used urine or excrement in their artworks include Piero Manzoni, Andres Serrano and Marc Quinn.

37. Stelarc and Sellars told me at Brunetti's Coffee

Shop in Carlton in August 2005 that they had to make a substantial financial outlay as well as experience difficulty, pain and inconvenience to acquire their biomaterials.

38. Stelarc said that he was embarrassed when he re alized that he would have to undergo a cosmetic pro cedure in order to undertake this project and it was his collaborative discussions with Sellars and her

knowledge and experience with biomaterials that as sisted in generating the outcome. Conversation with Stelarc at a meeting with the author in North Mel bourne, Australia, 17 August 2005.

39. See Duncan McCorquodale (editor and pro ducer) , Orlan, Ceci est mon corps ... Ceci est mon logi ciel ... This is my body ... This is my software ...

(London: Blackdog, 1996) pp. 41, 82-83.

40. See Julie Clarke, "The Sacrificial Body of Orlan," Body and Society 5, Nos. 2-3 (June-September), spe cial issue on Body Modification, Mike Featherstone and Bryan S. Turner, eds.; published concurrently in Mike Featherstone, ed., Body Modification (Theory, Cul ture and Society) (London, Thousand Oaks, CA, and

New Delhi: Sage, 2000).

41. See Science Daily, <http://www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/2004/03/040309074344.htm>.

42. Discussion with Stelarc at Federation Square, Mel bourne, 1 November 2005.

43. For more information on Marc Quinn's work see: 1992-2006 Cass Sculpture Foundation, West Sus sex, U.K.; Marc Quinn, <www.sculpture.org.uk/ biography/MarcQuinn> (accessed August 2005).

44. Andrews and Nelkin [29] p. 7.

45. Catherine Waldby, The Visible Human Project: In

formatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine (London and New York: Routledge, 2000) p. 157.

Manuscript received 10 November 2005.

Julie Clarke was awarded her Ph.D. from the

School of Art History, Cinema, Classics and

Archaeology at the University of Melbourne, where she currently holds the position of Hon

orary Fellow in Cinema Studies. She has been

published in Australia and internationally. Her most recent publication was a chapter in

Stelarc: The Monograph (2005).

416 Clarke, Corporeal M?lange

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Color Plate E

Stelarc and Nina Sellars, Blender, top view, 2005. (? Stelarc and Nina Sellars. Photo: Stelarc) The artists had bodily tissues and wastes removed from their bodies and combined in a blender that periodically mixed the contents. There was a choreography of blending and

bubbling sounds. See article by Julie Clarke.

437

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