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Hello, I'm Answer Moon, the talented of gorgeous drag Queen. I'm an expert when it comes to concealing a second side, a secret identity, if you will, and now I'm using that talent to uncover what other regular looking people are concealing in their own lives. I don't know what they're concealing, and neither do you. It's up to me to ask the right questions and then we can uncover it together.

Time for the guest.

Roll it up. Hi there, my name is Stollach. I'm seventy six years old. I'm a full time artist. I've been an artist since the late sixties early seventies. A couple of decades ago, I did a project of performance and that's what I'm keeping concealed from art simone today, Hello, sell, Like, how are you don't believe anything that I've just said?

Well, as soon as you said you were an artist, I knew was out the window.

I said, alright, alright, but I love it.

It meets you like, now, this is our first time meeting, so you've walked in.

You look like an everyday beautiful man.

I don't want to get offended, but you are giving slight grandpa vibes here, but in a good way. Do you have a Do you have any family? Do you have any like grandchildren anything?

Yeah? I do. I have two grandchildren.

That's why your grandpa vibes. You know how to do it, don't you.

Two boys?

Oh, two boys, that's all right. One of them may be a drag queen one day.

Hey, we can.

Only can only hope.

Well, beautiful, So we've got a bit of a background for you. So you're seventy six because you don't look a day over to thirty five in the right lighting. Save as me, same as me. What I'm we're doing today is asking you three questions, and from the answers to those three questions, I have to work out what you were concealing from me? What is hidden? Okay? First question, you are an artist. Who is your favorite artist?

Well, actually, my favorite artist is Duccio A Si in these Byzantine painter goldleaf. Oh, brilliant colors, extravagance, very very seductive, religious iconography.

Yes, what time period was he doing his art?

Late thirteen hundreds, fourteen hundreds of early fourteen hundreds.

So you're around then, weren't you?

Oh? Bloody hell, I.

Told him to use the gold lafe. I used the gold.

Lafe, mind you, but a more contemporary artist, Andy Warhol.

How beautiful. Okay, okay.

Second question for you is if you had to lose a body part, what would it be.

I reckon the kidney, because I've got I got two of them.

Okay, yes, you've got one, spare.

I always tell people I would happily lose my pinky toe, any one of them. Get rid of it. I don't need it in my life. Try finding shoes to fit a drag queen size foot. You know, that's very elegant and fashionable.

Very hard, but that would be a problem.

One less toe might actually fit something maybe. And Third, what is your favorite sound?

Well, white noise actually because it contains all the frequencies in the audible sound spectrum. Okay, it's really a combination of all sounds.

Yeah, well that's true with me. My favorite sound is the sound when you're walking on gravel. I just love it. It's my favorite sound. It's like crunch, crunch, crunch.

Okay.

Some of the answer these three questions, I have to work up what you are concealing from me? So all right, you're an artist okay, you'd lose a kidney.

Okay, so what do you use the kidneys for? What's that for?

Clearly nothing important if I don't remember. So art, extravagant andy warhole, Yeah, taking pictures? Yeah, all right, yep, so yeah, all right. And a third one, what's your favorite sound? White noise?

Well?

Yeah, yeah, noise. Yeah, that's It's quite boring, to be honest.

But.

All right, I think I know what you do, all right, I think I know what you're concealing from me. Now, I had an inkling. I had an inkling when you walked in. You said your name was Stellark, and so there's only one way to prove that you are who I think you are, because I think you are and I'm very excited if you are the person that I think you are, Stellark. Can you please lift up the sleeve of your jumper on your left arm?

Please? Can you please show me what is underneath? And if there's nothing there, I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

But if there's something there, I'm right and I love it when i'm right.

So let me get this clear. Yes, that's something up my sleeve.

Yes, I reckon, you've got well, I reckon I reckon if you live just sleeve and maybe all right, So Stellac is lifting his sleeve. Oh my god, yeah, Stellag has lifted his sleeve and on his arm is an ear. Yes, there is an ear on Stella's arm, and it's looking at me and I can look. I'm looking at it, and it's so happy to I've seeing me.

Hello here, I'm a performance artist who uses their physical body but also interested in technological augmentation, in other words, exploring alternative anatomical architectures. And in two thousand and six I decided, instead of technologically augmenting my body to surgically construct a soft prothesis an extra ear on my arm.

Hello, Stella, Ah, so much of what I mean?

Yes, Oh, I'm right, stell Luck is in my presence and it is the stellarg with an ear on his arm.

Oh my goodness. Has he been listening to me through the wall? Does you know? But I really have to know. I have to know. Why does Stellarck have an ear.

On his arm?

Is he just like a bit of a gossip? All right?

So I'm in the presence of royalty here, I am the Queen arts a moment, I'm here with King stellarg, Oh my goodness, I'm so excited to be meeting you. You've just shown me in real life your processus ear on your arm. Oh so people may not know much about you, whereas you know, like I know a little bit because I swear during my primary school years and high school year is you'd be on the TV or I'd read articles about you. I swear we did something in biology about you. So you've got an ear on

You know, yeah. I mean I discovered in art school that I was a bad painter, so I decided I should get onto doing performance work.

You with me both. I went to art school as well. I only lasted like a year and a half because I just like, I don't really know what's going on. They're like, do you want to take the beautiful portrait of someone? I said no, So I started drawing on my face. So I think we've got something in common here. I just want to talk about the ear for a while. Okay, I know, are you sick of talking about the ear? I feel like after all these years, You're.

Like to me, no, I'm not sick about it.

Oh good, good, So what was the process of finding someone to insertain ear in your arm?

You know, what does that go?

Did you go down to the GP and go, how do I would like an ear in my arm?

Please? And they go, what do you want about? Stellark? Not again?

I mean it took ten years to find three plastic surgeons and to get the funding to do the first surgical procedure. And actually during the second surgery, one surgeon was overheard saying to the other surgeons, well, if this is a work of art, we must be the artists.

All right.

Then maybe you think of other artists where, you know, like even Andy Warhol, like he was the you know conception with it all, but then it was a whole team of people that were helping to make it happen. So I feel like you're still the artist. But no, they did. They were the ones that cut you open, though, So why couldn't you What if someone donated you their ear, Like, what were the difference of that being to like getting the the you know, the processes.

Even if I used one of my own ears and I considered it very fleetingly, even if this was amputated and connected to my arm, you know, you would need a sort of micro serious microsurgery to connect blood vessels to you know, otherwise the ear just would not live. Having said that, with someone else's ear, then you've got the problem of immunological response.

I hope for you still like that one day you just you know, it will be so far in the future that will just be able to go, Oh.

You're But these days there's a possibility very soon of being able to three D print a near use living cells and also three D print the circuitry at the same time inside it.

How how much does that excite you?

Don't I look excited?

Yeah, it's so great that these things are possible. I mean they have a lot of other users, but for the used of having an ear on your arm, it's pretty exciting, isn't it.

Yeah? Well, I mean, why stop, you know, with one ear on one arm? Why stop with two arms instead of three?

Ah?

Has the look of your ear your other ear, your other other ear changed over the years, like as you've grown with it and around it, Like is it losing some definition or is it what has it changed?

No? Not, it hasn't hasn't changed from the original surgical procedure. But you have to understand that after the scaffold, the biomedical scaffold is inserted underneath my skin. The skin is suctioned over the scaffold.

Yeah.

Over a period of six months, you have tissue in growth and vascularization occurring. So it becomes a permanent part of your body. Yes, but about three years ago I had a surgical procedure to try to elevate the ear and make it more prominent.

Oh so you're still working.

Yeah, but it didn't succeed.

Yes, okay, but the.

Original intent was not only to replicate an ear and relocated on my arm, but rather to eventually electronically augment the ear. Yes, so it would become a remote listening device for people online, so that I can lug in and listen to what we we're speaking about.

Now, well, my goodness, you shouldn't say that so loud. The CIA will get very confused. I have to check everyone for an ear up their sleeve. But so let's let's clarify this. You're at the moment it is just a physical looking ear, but it has no ability to hear anything.

No, no, no, And the intent is to try to yeah, yeah, meant it.

In the in the journey to the ear, and the arm.

What was kind of the next couple of performance pieces or art projects he worked on.

Yeah, Well, coming to more recent performances, there was a performance titled rewirde Remis Yes, and that performance involved for five days, six hours every day, I could only see with the eyes of someone in London. I could only hear with the ears of someone in New York. But anyone anywhere could access my right arm and remotely activate

I've always wondered with performance artists who basically give free reign to like the public. Are people respectful because you know, it's like and they could do anything that could, you know, make you look at whatever, or they could make you listen to itether or they could make your arm do whatever. What's it like putting your trust in people, because that's a big thing to do.

Yeah, and it's very very strange to experience that non control of your body. But you know, this is what happens habitually. Yes, you know, we're conditioned to perform in particular ways. We act habitually all the time. We're conditioned by social institutions and our cultural conditioning most of the time NA and of course generally also through our gender.

It seems like you were discovering and exploring the world of body modification way before it almost became trendy for a while, But I feel like you were one of the first people to really be looking into that.

Is that true?

Well, I mean I've got lots of friends in the body modification community now, but at the time, you know, this was going back to the early seventies. Yes, I mean I was kind of naive. I didn't know about the S and M scene in San Francisco, didn't know that that there was a body suspension community, a very small one at the time, but that's increased. And so my first performances were suspending my body with hooks into

So let's backtrack a little bit. So for people that don't know you're doing suspension performances. So this is where you have like hooks, what are you putting into your skin to.

Be they're three milimeter effectively shark hooks, but with the barb filed off.

Oh yeah, we'll take the book then you can get them out, I guess. And how many hooks would you have on your body.

Between fourteen and eighteen, depending whether the body was vertically suspended yes or horizontal.

So typically eighteen hooks in you you're suspended up into the air in various positions. How do you prepare for something like that? What was your first baby steps? For anyone at home that wants to hang off a building? First of all, maybe ask a friend first, but before you know you want to do that, what are your steps into suspension?

Well, you know, at the time, no one was doing it that I knew of, and so people who were helping me were just friends, other artists.

It's true, like within the S and M scene, they'd kind of do it for a bit of a different reason.

They might tickle their pick a little bit. But I feel like.

Maybe that hasn't been exposed to the wider general public before. It's all kind of behind closed doors, but you're out there in public, been hung not like that, sorry, but like I was just.

Well, I did a couple of really public.

Building am I right?

Well? Between two buildings over East eleventh Street in New York, And yeah, got arrested for that, not not for performing you know, in public nudities, or not for performing some sodo masochistic act in public, but rather for being a danger to the public. Had I fallen on someone, right.

Take me, yes, incent exposure, Yes, sorry, there's hooks in me.

Back. They're like, no, you just could have hurt someone. Oh okay, all right then.

But that was only like four stories high, But in.

Covid I was only fourries high.

But in Copenhagen it was sixty meters high above the Royal Theater. But after about thirty meters all you could hear was the wushing of the wind, the whirring of the crane motors, and the creaking of the skin.

You should narrate horror novels and horror movies. I think you'd be very good at that. Something ever gone wrong in preparation for very suspension?

Only only one in the sense that well, a couple of times there was a suspension from a tree one of the few performances in Canberra, the Foot of Black Mountain in Canberra, and we exposed the roots of the tree to make the tree less stable looking, so you can imagine the roots kind of mirror the branches, and then I lay beneath the roots to get the insertions done.

I thought it was going A big hook ripped out of me and blood was everywhere.

No, no, what was happening every hook that was inserted. We had to flick off hands from my back.

Wow, that is really not what I thought you'd say in terms of things going wrong.

But is it painful? Like?

How do you tune that type of pain out? Is it meditation? What is it that?

Yeah, there's no there's no special technique as such, but but the attitude is that you perform with what I would call a posture of indifference. In other words, have no expectations, allow the performance to unfold in its own time, with its own rhythm. Once the performance begins, the thinking stops.

Yes, it sounds like me when I'm on stage. It says, I go on, I don't know what happens. I just come off, and I go, well, how did I go?

And look?

You know, I don't want to compare myself to you too much because I will ever be stellak, But you.

Know, yeah, well no, no, I've got.

A love all that you do at the moment, but you know, when I'm stopping a lot of my corsets and heels and all this stuff, it all hurts as well, and people go, how do you deal with it?

And it's the same. I'm like, it just is. It is what it is for me.

I don't realize how much pain I was in until I take it all off. Is that is there like a big rush of adrenaline when when your performance finishes and you're lowered and you can take everything out.

No, I think the best way to describe it is that you're in the same state of mind before, during, and after.

Yeah, what's the preparation in the lead up to do something like that?

Do you? You know?

I've listened to things of performance asks and like I lived at an egg for three weeks until I did the performance.

Do you do that? Or is just go and have a coffee?

No? No, there's no kind of special techniques involved. You know, of course, you try to plan and foresee any of the problems. Yes, you know, the physical problems, whether some thing might be dangerous, what risks are involved, because you know, like in Copenhagen it was a public event, whereas in New York. I got arrested in Copenhagen. The police manage the traffic that was accumulating down below. It's it's always different, so you never really learned from the previous performance, because.

Anything, anything can happen.

Still, Like, if I had to get a secondary or a third body part, what would you recommend for me? And where should I put it? What would you do for me? Because I've already got fake things attached to me all the time? Is that my real booms these that my real hips waist isn't real. So I'm used to making things out of nothing. So what do you think I should I should do?

I reckon just another arm a next time. I mean, you could do a lot with an extra you know, especially with a hand attest.

I know, another full limb with a hand attached.

But imagine, imagine would.

It be full size? Do you think maybe like a little one full size?

Full size, but with additional capabilities that it's ambidextrous and it has continuous wrist rotation, So imagine what you could do with that.

That would be the ultimate shit stereo like that, because I could just be staring the pot all the time.

That's what they'd called me.

I can't believe I got to meet these stellar performance artists who puts his body through the extreme as much as I admire him, though I probably won't be attaching another arm to my body just yet. You've been listening to an iHeart and Kiss production concealed with Art Simone. Grab your extra ear and listen for free on the iHeartRadio app and listen to your art's content. I don't forget to check us out on socials and yes there's pics.

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