Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Answer Moon, the talented of gorgeous drag Queen.
Speaker 1: I'm an expert when it comes to concealing a second side,
Speaker 1: a secret identity, if you will, and now I'm using
Speaker 1: that talent to uncover what other regular looking people are
Speaker 1: concealing in their own lives. I don't know what they're concealing,
Speaker 1: and neither do you. It's up to me to ask
Speaker 1: the right questions and then we can uncover it together.
Speaker 2: Time for the guest.
Speaker 3: Roll it up. Hi there, my name is Stollach. I'm
Speaker 3: seventy six years old. I'm a full time artist. I've
Speaker 3: been an artist since the late sixties early seventies. A
Speaker 3: couple of decades ago, I did a project of performance
Speaker 3: and that's what I'm keeping concealed from art simone today, Hello, sell, Like,
Speaker 3: how are you don't believe anything that I've just said?
Speaker 1: Well, as soon as you said you were an artist,
Speaker 1: I knew was out the window.
Speaker 2: I said, alright, alright, but I love it.
Speaker 1: It meets you like, now, this is our first time meeting,
Speaker 1: so you've walked in.
Speaker 2: You look like an everyday beautiful man.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get offended, but you are giving
Speaker 1: slight grandpa vibes here, but in a good way. Do
Speaker 1: you have a Do you have any family? Do you
Speaker 1: have any like grandchildren anything?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I do. I have two grandchildren.
Speaker 2: That's why your grandpa vibes. You know how to do it,
Speaker 2: don't you.
Speaker 3: Two boys?
Speaker 1: Oh, two boys, that's all right. One of them may
Speaker 1: be a drag queen one day.
Speaker 2: Hey, we can.
Speaker 3: Only can only hope.
Speaker 1: Well, beautiful, So we've got a bit of a background
Speaker 1: for you. So you're seventy six because you don't look
Speaker 1: a day over to thirty five in the right lighting.
Speaker 1: Save as me, same as me. What I'm we're doing
Speaker 1: today is asking you three questions, and from the answers
Speaker 1: to those three questions, I have to work out what
Speaker 1: you were concealing from me? What is hidden? Okay? First question,
Speaker 1: you are an artist. Who is your favorite artist?
Speaker 3: Well, actually, my favorite artist is Duccio A Si in
Speaker 3: these Byzantine painter goldleaf. Oh, brilliant colors, extravagance, very very seductive,
Speaker 3: religious iconography.
Speaker 2: Yes, what time period was he doing his art?
Speaker 3: Late thirteen hundreds, fourteen hundreds of early fourteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: So you're around then, weren't you?
Speaker 3: Oh? Bloody hell, I.
Speaker 2: Told him to use the gold lafe. I used the gold.
Speaker 3: Lafe, mind you, but a more contemporary artist, Andy Warhol.
Speaker 2: How beautiful. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Second question for you is if you had to lose
Speaker 1: a body part, what would it be.
Speaker 3: I reckon the kidney, because I've got I got two
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: Okay, yes, you've got one, spare.
Speaker 1: I always tell people I would happily lose my pinky toe,
Speaker 1: any one of them. Get rid of it. I don't
Speaker 1: need it in my life. Try finding shoes to fit
Speaker 1: a drag queen size foot. You know, that's very elegant
Speaker 1: and fashionable.
Speaker 3: Very hard, but that would be a problem.
Speaker 1: One less toe might actually fit something maybe. And Third,
Speaker 1: what is your favorite sound?
Speaker 3: Well, white noise actually because it contains all the frequencies
Speaker 3: in the audible sound spectrum. Okay, it's really a combination
Speaker 3: of all sounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's true with me. My favorite sound is
Speaker 1: the sound when you're walking on gravel. I just love it.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite sound. It's like crunch, crunch, crunch.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Some of the answer these three questions, I have to
Speaker 1: work up what you are concealing from me? So all right,
Speaker 1: you're an artist okay, you'd lose a kidney.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what do you use the kidneys for? What's
Speaker 2: that for?
Speaker 1: Clearly nothing important if I don't remember. So art, extravagant
Speaker 1: andy warhole, Yeah, taking pictures? Yeah, all right, yep, so yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. And a third one, what's your favorite sound?
Speaker 1: White noise?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, noise. Yeah, that's It's quite boring, to be honest.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 1: All right, I think I know what you do, all right,
Speaker 1: I think I know what you're concealing from me. Now,
Speaker 1: I had an inkling. I had an inkling when you
Speaker 1: walked in. You said your name was Stellark, and so
Speaker 1: there's only one way to prove that you are who
Speaker 1: I think you are, because I think you are and
Speaker 1: I'm very excited if you are the person that I
Speaker 1: think you are, Stellark. Can you please lift up the
Speaker 1: sleeve of your jumper on your left arm?
Speaker 2: Please? Can you please show me what is underneath? And
Speaker 2: if there's nothing there, I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: But if there's something there, I'm right and I love
Speaker 1: it when i'm right.
Speaker 3: So let me get this clear. Yes, that's something up
Speaker 3: my sleeve.
Speaker 1: Yes, I reckon, you've got well, I reckon I reckon
Speaker 1: if you live just sleeve and maybe all right, So
Speaker 1: Stellac is lifting his sleeve. Oh my god, yeah, Stellag
Speaker 1: has lifted his sleeve and on his arm is an ear. Yes,
Speaker 1: there is an ear on Stella's arm, and it's looking
Speaker 1: at me and I can look. I'm looking at it,
Speaker 1: and it's so happy to I've seeing me.
Speaker 3: Hello here, I'm a performance artist who uses their physical
Speaker 3: body but also interested in technological augmentation, in other words,
Speaker 3: exploring alternative anatomical architectures. And in two thousand and six
Speaker 3: I decided, instead of technologically augmenting my body to surgically
Speaker 3: construct a soft prothesis an extra ear on my arm.
Speaker 2: Hello, Stella, Ah, so much of what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, I'm right, stell Luck is in my presence
Speaker 1: and it is the stellarg with an ear on his arm.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. Has he been listening to me through
Speaker 2: the wall? Does you know? But I really have to know.
Speaker 2: I have to know. Why does Stellarck have an ear.
Speaker 3: On his arm?
Speaker 2: Is he just like a bit of a gossip? All right?
Speaker 1: So I'm in the presence of royalty here, I am
Speaker 1: the Queen arts a moment, I'm here with King stellarg,
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, I'm so excited to be meeting you.
Speaker 1: You've just shown me in real life your processus ear
Speaker 1: on your arm. Oh so people may not know much
Speaker 1: about you, whereas you know, like I know a little
Speaker 1: bit because I swear during my primary school years and
Speaker 1: high school year is you'd be on the TV or
Speaker 1: I'd read articles about you. I swear we did something
Speaker 1: in biology about you. So you've got an ear on
Speaker 1: your why? Why why do you have any on your well?
Speaker 3: You know, yeah. I mean I discovered in art school
Speaker 3: that I was a bad painter, so I decided I
Speaker 3: should get onto doing performance work.
Speaker 1: You with me both. I went to art school as well.
Speaker 1: I only lasted like a year and a half because
Speaker 1: I just like, I don't really know what's going on.
Speaker 1: They're like, do you want to take the beautiful portrait
Speaker 1: of someone? I said no, So I started drawing on
Speaker 1: my face. So I think we've got something in common here.
Speaker 1: I just want to talk about the ear for a while. Okay,
Speaker 1: I know, are you sick of talking about the ear?
Speaker 1: I feel like after all these years, You're.
Speaker 3: Like to me, no, I'm not sick about it.
Speaker 1: Oh good, good, So what was the process of finding
Speaker 1: someone to insertain ear in your arm?
Speaker 2: You know, what does that go?
Speaker 1: Did you go down to the GP and go, how
Speaker 1: do I would like an ear in my arm?
Speaker 2: Please? And they go, what do you want about? Stellark?
Speaker 2: Not again?
Speaker 3: I mean it took ten years to find three plastic
Speaker 3: surgeons and to get the funding to do the first
Speaker 3: surgical procedure. And actually during the second surgery, one surgeon
Speaker 3: was overheard saying to the other surgeons, well, if this
Speaker 3: is a work of art, we must be the artists.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Then maybe you think of other artists where, you know,
Speaker 1: like even Andy Warhol, like he was the you know
Speaker 1: conception with it all, but then it was a whole
Speaker 1: team of people that were helping to make it happen.
Speaker 1: So I feel like you're still the artist. But no,
Speaker 1: they did. They were the ones that cut you open, though,
Speaker 1: So why couldn't you What if someone donated you their ear, Like,
Speaker 1: what were the difference of that being to like getting
Speaker 1: the the you know, the processes.
Speaker 3: Even if I used one of my own ears and
Speaker 3: I considered it very fleetingly, even if this was amputated
Speaker 3: and connected to my arm, you know, you would need
Speaker 3: a sort of micro serious microsurgery to connect blood vessels
Speaker 3: to you know, otherwise the ear just would not live.
Speaker 3: Having said that, with someone else's ear, then you've got
Speaker 3: the problem of immunological response.
Speaker 1: I hope for you still like that one day you
Speaker 1: just you know, it will be so far in the
Speaker 1: future that will just be able to go, Oh.
Speaker 3: You're But these days there's a possibility very soon of
Speaker 3: being able to three D print a near use living
Speaker 3: cells and also three D print the circuitry at the
Speaker 3: same time inside it.
Speaker 2: How how much does that excite you?
Speaker 3: Don't I look excited?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so great that these things are possible. I
Speaker 1: mean they have a lot of other users, but for
Speaker 1: the used of having an ear on your arm, it's
Speaker 1: pretty exciting, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, I mean, why stop, you know, with one
Speaker 3: ear on one arm? Why stop with two arms instead
Speaker 3: of three?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 1: Has the look of your ear your other ear, your
Speaker 1: other other ear changed over the years, like as you've
Speaker 1: grown with it and around it, Like is it losing
Speaker 1: some definition or is it what has it changed?
Speaker 3: No? Not, it hasn't hasn't changed from the original surgical procedure.
Speaker 3: But you have to understand that after the scaffold, the
Speaker 3: biomedical scaffold is inserted underneath my skin. The skin is
Speaker 3: suctioned over the scaffold.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Over a period of six months, you have tissue in
Speaker 3: growth and vascularization occurring. So it becomes a permanent part
Speaker 3: of your body. Yes, but about three years ago I
Speaker 3: had a surgical procedure to try to elevate the ear
Speaker 3: and make it more prominent.
Speaker 2: Oh so you're still working.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it didn't succeed.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, but the.
Speaker 3: Original intent was not only to replicate an ear and
Speaker 3: relocated on my arm, but rather to eventually electronically augment
Speaker 3: the ear. Yes, so it would become a remote listening
Speaker 3: device for people online, so that I can lug in
Speaker 3: and listen to what we we're speaking about.
Speaker 1: Now, well, my goodness, you shouldn't say that so loud.
Speaker 1: The CIA will get very confused. I have to check
Speaker 1: everyone for an ear up their sleeve. But so let's
Speaker 1: let's clarify this. You're at the moment it is just
Speaker 1: a physical looking ear, but it has no ability to
Speaker 1: hear anything.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, And the intent is to try to yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: meant it.
Speaker 2: In the in the journey to the ear, and the arm.
Speaker 1: What was kind of the next couple of performance pieces
Speaker 1: or art projects he worked on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, coming to more recent performances, there was a
Speaker 3: performance titled rewirde Remis Yes, and that performance involved for
Speaker 3: five days, six hours every day, I could only see
Speaker 3: with the eyes of someone in London. I could only
Speaker 3: hear with the ears of someone in New York. But
Speaker 3: anyone anywhere could access my right arm and remotely activate
Speaker 3: it via the exoskeleton I was wearing. So in that case,
Speaker 3: what was happening was that you were sort of sharing
Speaker 3: visual and acoustical senses with people in other places and
Speaker 3: distributing your agency. The thing was, of course, if I
Speaker 3: was in a Chinese cafe in New York, I could
Speaker 3: hear one friend speaking to my left ear and his
Speaker 3: partner speaking to my right ear, and a Chinese waiter
Speaker 3: speaking to them in Chinese. I mean, certainly, then my
Speaker 3: acoustical focus was on what was happening there rather than
Speaker 3: what was, say, visually happening in London. So you're constantly
Speaker 3: shifting your awareness. And then when someone remotely activated my arm,
Speaker 3: that sort of shifted my balance and I had to
Speaker 3: pivot and turn to keep grounded. So, yeah, you really
Speaker 3: had that kind of experience of being in three places
Speaker 3: at once.
Speaker 1: I've always wondered with performance artists who basically give free
Speaker 1: reign to like the public. Are people respectful because you know,
Speaker 1: it's like and they could do anything that could, you know,
Speaker 1: make you look at whatever, or they could make you
Speaker 1: listen to itether or they could make your arm do whatever.
Speaker 1: What's it like putting your trust in people, because that's
Speaker 1: a big thing to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's very very strange to experience that non
Speaker 3: control of your body. But you know, this is what
Speaker 3: happens habitually. Yes, you know, we're conditioned to perform in
Speaker 3: particular ways. We act habitually all the time. We're conditioned
Speaker 3: by social institutions and our cultural conditioning most of the
Speaker 3: time NA and of course generally also through our gender.
Speaker 3: And breaking those customary acts and behaviors means that you're
Speaker 3: interrogating what a body is and how body performs, and
Speaker 3: what we mean by agency and identity.
Speaker 1: It seems like you were discovering and exploring the world
Speaker 1: of body modification way before it almost became trendy for
Speaker 1: a while, But I feel like you were one of
Speaker 1: the first people to really be looking into that.
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I've got lots of friends in the
Speaker 3: body modification community now, but at the time, you know,
Speaker 3: this was going back to the early seventies. Yes, I
Speaker 3: mean I was kind of naive. I didn't know about
Speaker 3: the S and M scene in San Francisco, didn't know
Speaker 3: that that there was a body suspension community, a very
Speaker 3: small one at the time, but that's increased. And so
Speaker 3: my first performances were suspending my body with hooks into
Speaker 3: my skin. So I did about twenty seven to twenty
Speaker 3: eight of those in different positions, in various locations, in
Speaker 3: alternate situations and circumstances. So discovering the kind of physical
Speaker 3: and psychological parameters of the body was what these first
Speaker 3: actions were all about.
Speaker 1: So let's backtrack a little bit. So for people that
Speaker 1: don't know you're doing suspension performances. So this is where
Speaker 1: you have like hooks, what are you putting into your
Speaker 1: skin to.
Speaker 3: Be they're three milimeter effectively shark hooks, but with the
Speaker 3: barb filed off.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we'll take the book then you can get
Speaker 1: them out, I guess. And how many hooks would you
Speaker 1: have on your body.
Speaker 3: Between fourteen and eighteen, depending whether the body was vertically
Speaker 3: suspended yes or horizontal.
Speaker 1: So typically eighteen hooks in you you're suspended up into
Speaker 1: the air in various positions. How do you prepare for
Speaker 1: something like that? What was your first baby steps? For
Speaker 1: anyone at home that wants to hang off a building?
Speaker 1: First of all, maybe ask a friend first, but before
Speaker 1: you know you want to do that, what are your
Speaker 1: steps into suspension?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, at the time, no one was doing
Speaker 3: it that I knew of, and so people who were
Speaker 3: helping me were just friends, other artists.
Speaker 1: It's true, like within the S and M scene, they'd
Speaker 1: kind of do it for a bit of a different reason.
Speaker 2: They might tickle their pick a little bit. But I
Speaker 2: feel like.
Speaker 1: Maybe that hasn't been exposed to the wider general public before.
Speaker 1: It's all kind of behind closed doors, but you're out
Speaker 1: there in public, been hung not like that, sorry, but
Speaker 1: like I was just.
Speaker 3: Well, I did a couple of really public.
Speaker 2: Building am I right?
Speaker 3: Well? Between two buildings over East eleventh Street in New York,
Speaker 3: And yeah, got arrested for that, not not for performing
Speaker 3: you know, in public nudities, or not for performing some
Speaker 3: sodo masochistic act in public, but rather for being a
Speaker 3: danger to the public. Had I fallen on someone, right.
Speaker 1: Take me, yes, incent exposure, Yes, sorry, there's hooks in me.
Speaker 2: Back. They're like, no, you just could have hurt someone.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, all right then.
Speaker 3: But that was only like four stories high, But in.
Speaker 2: Covid I was only fourries high.
Speaker 3: But in Copenhagen it was sixty meters high above the
Speaker 3: Royal Theater. But after about thirty meters all you could
Speaker 3: hear was the wushing of the wind, the whirring of
Speaker 3: the crane motors, and the creaking of the skin.
Speaker 1: You should narrate horror novels and horror movies. I think
Speaker 1: you'd be very good at that. Something ever gone wrong
Speaker 1: in preparation for very suspension?
Speaker 3: Only only one in the sense that well, a couple
Speaker 3: of times there was a suspension from a tree one
Speaker 3: of the few performances in Canberra, the Foot of Black
Speaker 3: Mountain in Canberra, and we exposed the roots of the
Speaker 3: tree to make the tree less stable looking, so you
Speaker 3: can imagine the roots kind of mirror the branches, and
Speaker 3: then I lay beneath the roots to get the insertions done.
Speaker 3: There was a group of a couple of people helping out. Yes,
Speaker 3: but the problem was that we had stirred, accidentally stirred
Speaker 3: a bunch of bull ants at a nest of bullands.
Speaker 1: I thought it was going A big hook ripped out
Speaker 1: of me and blood was everywhere.
Speaker 3: No, no, what was happening every hook that was inserted.
Speaker 3: We had to flick off hands from my back.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is really not what I thought you'd say
Speaker 1: in terms of things going wrong.
Speaker 2: But is it painful? Like?
Speaker 1: How do you tune that type of pain out? Is
Speaker 1: it meditation? What is it that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no there's no special technique as such, but
Speaker 3: but the attitude is that you perform with what I
Speaker 3: would call a posture of indifference. In other words, have
Speaker 3: no expectations, allow the performance to unfold in its own time,
Speaker 3: with its own rhythm. Once the performance begins, the thinking stops.
Speaker 1: Yes, it sounds like me when I'm on stage. It says,
Speaker 1: I go on, I don't know what happens. I just
Speaker 1: come off, and I go, well, how did I go?
Speaker 2: And look?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to compare myself to you
Speaker 1: too much because I will ever be stellak, But you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, well no, no, I've got.
Speaker 1: A love all that you do at the moment, but
Speaker 1: you know, when I'm stopping a lot of my corsets
Speaker 1: and heels and all this stuff, it all hurts as well,
Speaker 1: and people go, how do you deal with it?
Speaker 2: And it's the same. I'm like, it just is. It
Speaker 2: is what it is for me.
Speaker 1: I don't realize how much pain I was in until
Speaker 1: I take it all off. Is that is there like
Speaker 1: a big rush of adrenaline when when your performance finishes
Speaker 1: and you're lowered and you can take everything out.
Speaker 3: No, I think the best way to describe it is
Speaker 3: that you're in the same state of mind before, during,
Speaker 3: and after.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's the preparation in the lead up to do
Speaker 1: something like that?
Speaker 2: Do you? You know?
Speaker 1: I've listened to things of performance asks and like I
Speaker 1: lived at an egg for three weeks until I did
Speaker 1: the performance.
Speaker 2: Do you do that? Or is just go and have
Speaker 2: a coffee?
Speaker 3: No? No, there's no kind of special techniques involved. You know,
Speaker 3: of course, you try to plan and foresee any of
Speaker 3: the problems. Yes, you know, the physical problems, whether some
Speaker 3: thing might be dangerous, what risks are involved, because you know,
Speaker 3: like in Copenhagen it was a public event, whereas in
Speaker 3: New York. I got arrested in Copenhagen. The police manage
Speaker 3: the traffic that was accumulating down below. It's it's always different,
Speaker 3: so you never really learned from the previous performance, because.
Speaker 2: Anything, anything can happen.
Speaker 1: Still, Like, if I had to get a secondary or
Speaker 1: a third body part, what would you recommend for me?
Speaker 1: And where should I put it? What would you do
Speaker 1: for me? Because I've already got fake things attached to
Speaker 1: me all the time? Is that my real booms these
Speaker 1: that my real hips waist isn't real. So I'm used
Speaker 1: to making things out of nothing. So what do you
Speaker 1: think I should I should do?
Speaker 3: I reckon just another arm a next time. I mean,
Speaker 3: you could do a lot with an extra you know,
Speaker 3: especially with a hand attest.
Speaker 2: I know, another full limb with a hand attached.
Speaker 3: But imagine, imagine would.
Speaker 2: It be full size? Do you think maybe like a
Speaker 2: little one full size?
Speaker 3: Full size, but with additional capabilities that it's ambidextrous and
Speaker 3: it has continuous wrist rotation, So imagine what you could
Speaker 3: do with that.
Speaker 1: That would be the ultimate shit stereo like that, because
Speaker 1: I could just be staring the pot all the time.
Speaker 2: That's what they'd called me.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I got to meet these stellar performance
Speaker 1: artists who puts his body through the extreme as much
Speaker 1: as I admire him, though I probably won't be attaching
Speaker 1: another arm to my body just yet. You've been listening
Speaker 1: to an iHeart and Kiss production concealed with Art Simone.
Speaker 1: Grab your extra ear and listen for free on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app and listen to your art's content. I don't
Speaker 1: forget to check us out on socials and yes there's pics.
Speaker 3: Mamma h