How body piercing, mutilation, self-harm made this Aussie a rock star
'We're not trying to do a piece that examines how important he is,' demurs Moore, a former director of the Melbourne International Film Festival. 'We're doing a homage to his career, to his spirit of exploration and curiosity, to his longevity in the Australian art scene – to the fact that here is a guy who's grown up in the western suburbs of Melbourne and gone on to become one of the better-known performing artists on the international circuit. It's a salute to him and his personality and his cultural output over a very long time.'
Moore first encountered a Stelarc performance in 1982, when the artist was suspended, naked (as was his wont) from the limbs of a massive gum tree in Canberra.
For Moore, who was then working in theatre, the sight of Stelarc's body twitching as his limbs froze up was instantly fascinating. 'It was the ritual element of it, the theatrical side of it. These are images that will burn into your retina and never, ever leave you – and I'm grateful to Stelarc for that.'
Decades later, Moore met Doggett Williams, whom he describes as 'an inveterate collector of footage', including of Stelarc's performances over the years. There was an archive at ACMI, too. And Stelarc had 'eight boxes [of footage] in his house, on all these formats known and unknown to man, stuff we've never seen before'. The seeds of a career-spanning filmic survey were in place.
Suspending Disbelief doesn't offer much insight into Stelarc himself. It's far more focused on the work than the man. And, says Moore, that's a deliberate response to what has become standard practice in the endangered realm of the arts documentary.
'We seem to be drifting towards the hagiography mode,' says Moore. 'I look in horror at a program like the ABC's Creative Types... all those personalities are wonderful, they're celebrities. But art is also dirty and painful, it hurts and it's messy and it's chaotic. And we wanted to make a counter to that style of reporting.'
Arguably, no film about Stelarc could ever do differently. His career – which dates back to the late 1960s – has always revolved around the body. There were early experiments in tracking its internal functions, the famous suspensions – embraced by a generation of younger fans today as pioneering efforts in body modification and self-mutilation – and the later (and ongoing) efforts to transcend the limits of the corporeal form through integration of technology, robotics and AI into the physical shell.
There's not a lot of hand-holding in the film, but there are a few signposts that serve as pointers for further research for the curious – the briefly glimpsed reference to the Fluxus art movement, for instance, and the emergence of the body itself as a medium for art.
To that end, there's footage of fellow Australian Mike Parr's infamous performance at the Venice Biennale in 1977, in which he appeared to chop off his own arm (the severed limb was, in fact, a prosthesis packed with meat, and attached to the end of Parr's actual foreshortened arm, with which he was born).
It is remarkable, and appalling, and arrives without warning – and Moore makes no apologies for its inclusion.
'It's incredible footage, and it illustrates a point for us about the European body-art movement,' he says. 'But how do you warn people about it? Do you warn people about it? Do you say, 'oh, the sequence that's going to happen now is actually artificial, it's not a real arm'? But John and I agreed, we wanted the shock value.'
Loading
Scenes like this are meant to be disturbing, both in the film and in the moments captured in it. 'They hark back to images of crucifixion or public hangings,' Moore says of Stelarc's suspensions, as well as the broader body-art movement. 'There's something deep down and slightly nasty and scary about them. It's blood and pain, something subterranean.'
But, many people will ask, is it art?
'Of course it is,' he insists. 'If he'd done it in his bedroom and just kept it there, it probably wouldn't be. Because he's made it so public, shoved it in our faces and made us look at it, it becomes art.
'Whether you like it or not,' he adds, 'is a different question.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Sydney Morning Herald
5 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Ten new books to add to your reading pile
What's good, what's bad, and what's in between in literature? Here we review the latest titles. See all 51 stories. Looking for some psychological suspense? A reimagining of literary history? Perhaps a deep-dive into the work of the late Australian historian John Hirst, or a gripping real-life account of women working for the French resistance during World War II? Our reviewers have these and more covered in this week's reviews. Happy reading! FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Famous Last Words Gillian McAllister Penguin, $34.99 A nightmare day – one that seems too strange to believe. Camilla is dropping her daughter Polly off on her first day at school, and husband Luke, a mild-mannered writer, isn't there. He isn't responding to messages, which is unlike him. Her annoyance quickly escalates into alarm when the police arrive asking to talk to her about her husband, and shock sets in when she's told the news of an unfolding hostage situation in London. He's being held hostage, she thinks. She's incredulous at viewing video evidence of Luke as the hostage-taker. How on earth did her husband become a violent criminal, without the slightest warning? At a gut level, Camilla refuses to concede that Luke could possibly do what she is seeing him do with her own eyes, but she agrees to assist DCI Niall Thompson conduct hostage negotiations, hoping to defuse the crisis without bloodshed. The game will change, and the inexplicable will become clear in this taut and twisting thriller. Fans of Liane Moriarty (and superior, character-driven psychological suspense generally) should lap this one up. Stephen King's private detective Holly Gibney returns in Never Flinch, with more than enough to keep her occupied. There seem to be two cases, though her friend, Izzy Jaynes, a detective at Buckeye police department, is handling one of them. It starts with a sinister letter sent to police from a would-be serial killer who promises to mete out lethal vigilante justice to 13 guilty persons and one innocent, to avenge a grave wrong committed. The threat isn't idle. Chapters told from the killer's perspective are interwoven as the body count climbs, but when Izzy turns to Holly for assistance, Holly is temporarily indisposed: she's moonlighting as a bodyguard for feminist author Kate McKay, who fears being stalked by a radical religious activist on a speaking tour. Never Flinch is a rather tortured and over-realised novel for King. It really should have been split into two novels, as without radical condensation and extremely brisk exposition, there's simply too much here to merge the two narrative threads successfully without one pulling focus from the other. 'The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other.' So begins this revenge thriller from Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters. It's a killer line, and for Birdie Keller, vengeance has been a long time coming. The ice-cold nature of her rage is amplified by the casual way she goes about her daily domestic routine, as if nothing had changed, as if Jimmy Maguire – the man who murdered Birdie's sister 18 years earlier – had not been released from jail, as if she didn't have a gun and wasn't about to head into London to use it. The Sunshine Man layers multiple perspectives, including Maguire's, and flashes back to the events surrounding the original crime, where lurking in the westering fields of her childhood in Devon and Cornwall, a terrible truth lies in wait. It would have been easy for this one to misfire. Revenge is a basic human impulse, but without complications it isn't always thriller material. Stonex is excellent, though, at playing with the reader's sympathies, allowing elements of the story to be shaped by memory and character, so that provisional judgments jump around until the picture becomes more complete. The Haunting of Mr and Mrs Stevenson Belinda Lyons-Lee Transit Lounge, $34.99 Where did Robert Louis Stevenson get the idea for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Well, his Calvinist upbringing influenced his psychological fable, but there was, too, a charming man of his acquaintance, Eugene Chantrelle, who was later tried and hanged for murdering his wife, Elizabeth. Geelong-based writer Belinda Lyons-Lee goes behind the scenes, reimagining a piece of literary and criminal history from the viewpoint of Stevenson's wife, Fanny, herself a successful author, who fell in love with the younger Robert after divorcing her wayward husband in the US. In Lyons-Lee's telling, theirs was an intellectual, literary and romantic bond, and their encounter with the two-faced Chantrelle is one of many episodes – including a seance with the Shelleys and a haunted wardrobe – that lace literary biography and an eerie, gothic sensibility. Some of the prose isn't polished to the sort of sheen that might make this dark material truly glisten, but it's fascinating literary historical fiction, nonetheless. Awake in the Floating City Susanna Kwan Simon & Schuster, $34.99 Seas have risen and climate change has caused disastrous flooding in a future San Francisco. Just turned 40, Bo – an artist whose desire to create has dried up, even as the rain refuses to abate – is set to leave the city as part of anexodus of residents. She plans to flee the sodden streets and crumbling buildings and head to Canada, but when the day to leave arrives, she discovers a note urging her to stay. Her elderly neighbour, Mia, is 130 years old, and she's been abandoned to her fate. Taking up Mia's offer to be her part-time paid carer, Bo befriends the supercentenarian and eventually, her muse returns: she begins to make art inspired by Mia's long life, finding a way to be creative in the shadow of catastrophic destruction. Awake in the Floating City is literary cli-fi that proceeds from a positively Biblical extreme weather event. The disaster is evoked in spartan but atmospheric detail, and the characters have some depth, but the plot itself is stretched too thin over the length of a novel, and it sometimes feels like the barest frame for philosophical musing on human nature and need. NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK John Hirst: Selected Writings Edited by Chris Feik La Trobe University Press, $36.99 John Hirst (1942-2016), as this collection of essays and commentaries amply attests, was a historian who went his own way. No stranger to controversy, evident, for example, in his views on colonisation and the dispossession of Indigenous Australians. History in its British imperialist incarnation is almost presented as a kind of impersonal force, indifferent to and beyond moralising by 'liberal fantasists' who, seeking some sort of reconciliation with the wrongs of a shameful past, imagine the tragedy could have been avoided and ignore the inevitability of the brutal 'phenomenon' of European expansion. A point that fellow historian and friend Robert Manne addresses in his commentary, stating historians are also humans and will make judgments. Mind you, at the same time, Hirst was morally outraged with the Stolen Generation and the damage done to Aboriginal culture. Whether talking about his politics over the years, multiculturalism, his pro-republic views or the democratic legacy of the convict years, this is a distillation of a contrarian mind that couldn't help but challenge orthodoxy (especially on the left). Overall, it's impossible not to be impressed by the scope of his works. The Scientist Who Wasn't There Joanne Briggs Ithaka, $36.99 When Joanne Briggs was growing up, her scientist father (who'd been a member of a research team at NASA) was the font of all wisdom. Even when he left his marriage and children, she defended him, saying her father knew all there was to know about science. But the charade of his life crumbled in 1986 when The Sunday Times ran an exposé headed 'The Bogus Work of Professor Briggs'. His daughter's investigation into the fabricated life that was the enigma of her father (who died mysteriously in 1986) is a compelling tale of delusion and deception – Briggs, at one point, imagining him as a spy with another whole hidden life. The story, which ranges from Britain, to the US and Deakin University in Victoria, involves, among other things, questionable research findings for pharmaceutical companies and faked qualifications. The fact and fiction of her father's life is mirrored stylistically in a highly imaginative way, Briggs frequently borrowing from fiction. Often very moving, this is amazingly assured for a first book. The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck Lynne Olson Scribe, $37.99 The eponymous sisterhood refers to four French women – Germaine Tillion, Anise Girad, Genevieve de Gaulle (niece of Charles) and Jacqueline d'Alincourt. All were members of the French Resistance during the war, though part of different networks, and all were caught and packed off to Ravensbruck, the all-female concentration camp in Germany. This thoroughly researched, absorbing tale incorporates the lives of many other female resistance fighters, and a key theme running through the book is that the vital role of women in the movement has been either ignored or played down. It's a story of incredible individual bravery that also emphasises the crucial importance and intensity of the lifelong bond between them that was forged in the hell-hole of Ravensbruck. Each of these women is worthy of her own biography. Tillion, an anthropologist, helped POWs and allied servicemen escape until she was betrayed by a Catholic priest working for the Germans who infiltrated her network. She survived the camp, lived to be 100 and, with Girad, is now buried in the Pantheon along with the greats of French history. Among other things, this is an inspiring study of character, courage and grace under pressure. If Hamlet had taken Tibbits' advice and forgiven all concerned so that he could move on, he might have been a happier character. Mind you, there'd be no play. But this is precisely Tibbits' point – that revenge and anger always end badly, and are emotionally, physically and psychologically destructive. A dead weight that anchors you to the pain of the past. The only effective way out is forgiveness. It doesn't mean absolving the other person of guilt, but the act of forgiving is the most effective way of letting go and conceiving of the future with hope. And it doesn't need to be reciprocal, he points out, quoting Oscar Wilde – 'Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much' – in this self-help guide with step-by-step strategies. Tibbits is a counsellor as well as a sports coach, and often enough the advice comes across like a half-time revving. And there's the inevitable, rousing 'you can do it' rhetoric, but he's got some pretty valid points. In a recent experiment, scientists placed a number of white volleyballs among a flock of geese hatching their eggs. The geese, attracted by the large, white objects, left their eggs and attempted to hatch the volleyballs. The geese were in the thrall of what Niklas Brendborg calls 'superstimuli' – his point being that humans are no less susceptible to it than geese. To prove it, he looks at food, sex and online screen superstimuli. Obesity, for example, is not the result of increasingly sedentary lives, but the rise of ultra-processed foods designed by food companies to make us eat more, thereby changing our biology. Similarly, recent surveys point to declining sex in relationships being caused by the rising consumption of the sexual form of superstimuli – glossy, air-brushed pornography. Brendborg makes his points entertainingly, while also drawing on copious research material. But there are also occasions when it feels like he's taking a long time to point out the obvious. Capitalism has always been greedy, grasping and devious.


West Australian
13 hours ago
- West Australian
Listen Out: Australian music festival cancelled for 2025 but announces ‘one-off curated parties'
Organisers of an annual Australian music festival, which has attracted the likes of Denzel Curry, Flume and Diplo on lineups over the years, have confirmed the event won't be going ahead this year. Listen Out has been cancelled for 2025, with a post shared on social media saying it could happen due to not being able to curate a 'cultural and energetic' lineup that 'flows' between musicians and fans. ' breath. This one's tough. Listen Out won't be going ahead this year,' the post said. 'We've always tried to build something special where the lineup reflects the culture and the energy flows both ways between the artists and last few years have been tough. 'So, we're hitting pause on Listen Out as you know it. But we're not going anywhere.' Instead, the team behind the popular festival will introduce Listen Out Presents. A 'one off carefully curated parties in killer locations around Australia all year long'. Perth has been confirmed as a location for this featuring 'some of the best artists in the world'. 'We're still here for the good in a new way. We're not saying anything now,' the post continued. Disappointed music lovers took to the comments section of the post with messages of outrage. 'This is not okay,' one fan said. Another fan said: 'Had me excited for it.' 'That's a joke, where are all the good festivals going? I was counting on listen out to pull though ugh,' a third added. Some people felt jipped by the fact the festival had last month teased the event and encouraged fans to 'Sign up for Listen Out '25' for updates. The cancellation comes after last year's headliners pulled out within days of the event. South African R&B singer Tyla and US rapper Flo Milli cancelled their Australian trip just two days before they were set to take the stage at venues in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney. Aussie artist Lithe and American DJ John Summit also pulled out. Summit addressed his cancellation in a TikTok video after the event happened saying: 'A lot of American artists dropped from this festival for 'personal reasons''.


Perth Now
13 hours ago
- Perth Now
Fans angry after another music festival bites the dust
Organisers of an annual Australian music festival, which has attracted the likes of Denzel Curry, Flume and Diplo on lineups over the years, have confirmed the event won't be going ahead this year. Listen Out has been cancelled for 2025, with a post shared on social media saying it could happen due to not being able to curate a 'cultural and energetic' lineup that 'flows' between musicians and fans. ' breath. This one's tough. Listen Out won't be going ahead this year,' the post said. 'We've always tried to build something special where the lineup reflects the culture and the energy flows both ways between the artists and last few years have been tough. 'So, we're hitting pause on Listen Out as you know it. But we're not going anywhere.' Instead, the team behind the popular festival will introduce Listen Out Presents. A 'one off carefully curated parties in killer locations around Australia all year long'. If you'd like to view this content, please adjust your . To find out more about how we use cookies, please see our Cookie Guide. Perth has been confirmed as a location for this featuring 'some of the best artists in the world'. 'We're still here for the good in a new way. We're not saying anything now,' the post continued. Disappointed music lovers took to the comments section of the post with messages of outrage. 'This is not okay,' one fan said. Another fan said: 'Had me excited for it.' 'That's a joke, where are all the good festivals going? I was counting on listen out to pull though ugh,' a third added. Some people felt jipped by the fact the festival had last month teased the event and encouraged fans to 'Sign up for Listen Out '25' for updates. The cancellation comes after last year's headliners pulled out within days of the event. South African R&B singer Tyla and US rapper Flo Milli cancelled their Australian trip just two days before they were set to take the stage at venues in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney. Aussie artist Lithe and American DJ John Summit also pulled out. Summit addressed his cancellation in a TikTok video after the event happened saying: 'A lot of American artists dropped from this festival for 'personal reasons''.