By Jason Pfohl

“Anonymous and uncertain, suspended in stress, the body realizes its obsolescence. Its stretched skin becomes a gravitational landscape. The suspended and pacified body is obsolete but not yet extinct. It has desires but does not fulfill them. It feels pain but remains silent and stoic. A body that neither thinks nor shows emotions. A suspended body is a zombie body. It does not think because it does not have a mind of its own nor any mind at all in the traditional metaphysical sense. To be suspended is to be between states. To be neither one nor the other. To be in suspense is neither to be able to participate in the present nor to anticipate the outcome.”
– Stelarc

I feel my naked body’s weight on the ground with ten hooks already through the skin on the front of my body. My hands grip the central wheel of the mainframe over my head, opening and immobilizing my chest. My gaze is aimed at the ceiling, focused on the central swivel system and the winch. My sight is obstructed and narrowed by the strap that will support the weight of my head when we are lifted into space, but technicians float in and out of my peripheral vision as they prepare the rigging, connecting the framework to me and to the other five bodies.

Time is temporarily suspended. Thoughts flicker through my mind. My passing memories and emotions are only a reminder that I am losing my identity as an individual and becoming a mechanical support unit for a larger entity. I repeatedly return to focus on my breathing and observe the stillness of my body lying on the ground, interrupted by cycles of trembling and an accelerated heartbeat. As the lines connecting us are tensed and adjusted, pulling the skin upwards, I collapse my weight inwards, testing the elasticity of my skin against gravity while preparing for the inevitable.

The observers in the audience who expected a performance will be disappointed; this is not a theatrical event for entertainment. There is no concern for time limitations. Instead, this is the vision of the futurist artist, Stelarc, made into reality by Havve Fjell and his technical support team of more than thirty people from nine countries. Wearing face masks and nitrile gloves while the rigging is threaded and adjusted, Havve and his crew operate with the smooth efficiency of a medical team combined with the knowledge of alpine explorers, carefully calculating weight bearing loads and the practical concerns of lifting six bodies into the air. The hush in the room, and the rise and fall of the murmur of the audience as expectation builds, is all I know of the progress the technical crew is making. My nudity feels clinical rather than artistic: I am a specimen, an experiment, disposable. Our bodies can be replaced by other bodies that meet the same size and weight parameters. We are no longer individuals but structural elements, spokes on a wheel.

With a jolt, the amplified sound of the winch announces the bodies’, our bodies’, departure from the ground. The machine has no empathy and no concern for human sensation; a switch controls our position in space. I cannot see the others, as my movement and vision is constrained, but I am aware of them through the tension in the hooks in my skin. We are a single entity.

The technicians make adjustments.

There is no applause.

The structure begins to spin. There is no sense of being lifted, just the amplified sound of the winch as we are raised and lowered. The jolt on the hooks and flesh is the same regardless of upward or downward movement. The shadows on the ceiling are spinning, but I cannot make out individual bodies; we have become a living-kinetic sculpture—a biomechanical support system of six bodies alternating between tension and relaxation, spinning in Earth’s gravity. Time remains suspended. We spin faster and then slower; we are raised and lowered. I feel like the ghost inside the machine; deep serenity combined with awe of the sublime beauty of the constantly moving shadows in my peripheral vision.

Eventually, Stelarc’s voice informs us that the experiment is almost over.

The amplified sounds of the winch announce our return to the ground with the same cold indifference that hoisted us into space. The technicians reappear to unplug the bodies from the metal structure. The cones formed by the rigging quickly disappear, and the tension is cut. The bodies are released and the wounds from the hooks are cleaned and bandaged. We rise again to our feet, once again human.

About the performance: “SHADOW SUSPENSION WAS A COLLABORATION WITH HAVVE FJELL FOR THE DALLAS SUSCON 2013, ORGANIZED BY ALLEN FALKNER. IT WAS HELD AT THE LAKEWOOD THEATRE, DALLAS ON MARCH 30, 2013. 6 BODIES, 3 MALES AND 3 FEMALES, WERE SUSPENDED HORIZONTALLY FACE-UP IN A HEXAGONAL CONFIGURATION. THE BODY STRUCTURE WAS SPUN, WHILST WINCHED UP AND LOWERED DOWN AND THE SOUNDS AMPLIFIED. AN AESTHETIC SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM OF CAMERAS POSITIONED ABOVE, BELOW AND A HAND-HELD CAMERA ENABLED STREAMING OF THE PERFORMANCE FROMA MULTIPLICITY OF VIEWPOINTS. THE DURATION OF THE SUSPENSION ITSELF WAS 23 MINUTES.”
— STELARC