“We are in a time of circulating flesh.”

Stelarc said that to me 13 years ago. In 2026, it reads less like art criticism and more like a status report.

He had grown an ear on his arm. He had hung himself from hooks 25 times. He had let strangers on the internet choreograph his muscles through electrical stimulation, his body remote-controlled across continents.

Most people called it spectacle. I think it was inquiry.

Because long before deepfakes, before voice cloning, before AI agents wearing our faces, was already asking the question we now cannot avoid:

Where does the body end and the network begin?

Two lines from our conversation have stayed with me since 2013:

“As artists, we are really in the business of generating contestable futures, possibilities that can be examined. Often, they would be discarded. Sometimes, they may be appropriated.”

“If you want to imagine a future, any future, you have to factor the unpredictable. Otherwise it is not a future.”

He was not forecasting. He was provoking.

And the provocation has aged into prophecy.

Watch the full Singularity 1on1 interview with Then ask yourself what you would extrude beyond your skin, and what you would refuse to.

(https://www.singularityweblog.com/stelarc/)

Though strictly speaking he doesn’t consider himself to be a transhumanist, he also doesn’t mind being labeled a transhumanist artist. has been on my guest wish list since the very beginning of my podcast and I was very happy to interview him on Singularity 1on1.