No Art In The Performance

Cypriot-Australian eccentric “performance artist” Stelios Arcadious has set himself apart from contemporaries.

After a 10 year search, he found a surgeon willing to give him a new ear…his third. Working as a Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University's Digital Research Unit, he was able to procure an ear grown in a lab that was implanted into his left forearm in 2006. After his final operation last September, it is fully formed for his next step – making it hear.

Arcadious believes art "should be more than simply illustrating ideas." He hopes to get a microphone implanted as well, which will connect with a bluetooth transmitter.

“That way you can listen to what my ear is hearing.”

I’m sure that forearm hears a whole lot differently than those other ones two feet away.

I’m glad there are so many people who are driven to make themselves deliberately different by doing body mods, especially those stupid ones. In order to impress your fellow humans yet show your individuality, you have to make yourself not look like them, right? Know that nobody would put the effort into looking that way if they were not ever going to be seen. It’s an ego thing, not a self-gratification. And if you don’t believe that, think about it again next time you get ready for a date.

From splitting the tongue to horn and metal stud implants, they are the next stage in personalization, now that tattoos and piercings no longer make the maverick. Silly and outlandish, but next… And don’t confuse any of this with real art. Your body is not a canvas and living with your lame attempt at creativity hardly a performance of any type. Performance art is fairly marginal in terms of merit, but this is setting the bar about as low as the rungs will take it.