ANNOUNCING THE APP BODY PIERCING ARCHIVE

Paul King
Committee Chairperson and APP Treasurer

Anyone who has sat in on one of my classes knows my passion for recovering and preserving our community’s history. Historic Western attitudes of pathology and shame led to the loss of much of our history. I am filled with honor and excitement to publicly announcement the Association of Professional Piercer’s newest committee, the Body Piercing Archive (BPA). The formation of the Body Piercing Archive was authorized by the Association of Professional Piercers’ Board of Directors in June 2014. We have been working behind the scenes on establishing a committed team of workers, an organizational structure, and some preliminary goals.

Mission Statement:

“The mission of the Body Piercing Archive is to select, collect, document, preserve, exhibit, and interpret the personal, social, and material evolving histories of Body Piercing to ensure these artifacts are available to present and successive generations.”

For those familiar with archival collections, the goals laid out in this mission statement are daunting, requiring a commitment of time, training, and resources. We are proceeding methodically by rolling out the archive as manageable and contained projects.

Our first major short-term projects will be the organizing and cataloging of the APP’s corporate internal records as well as developing two public exhibits during the APP 2015 conference. In honoring the APP’s 20th anniversary, we will display the last 20 years’ development of our conference, outreach, and education. In addition, we will honor the passing of a piercing pioneer, Raelyn Gallina, with a memorial exhibit.

At this time, we are actively seeking loaned or donated items of importance pertaining to the APP’s history as well as Raelyn Gallina’s personal life and piercing career. Please contact us if you have any images, material items, ephemera, correspondences, and/or stories that you feel may be of interest to the BPA.

Some archives place a greater emphasis and dedication of resources to preserving and protecting objects at the expense of creating access to historical knowledge. Preservation will certainly be an important element of our efforts; however, early on we decided we wanted to focus our initial attention on projects that allow for community usage. Someday, the BPA committee and APP Board of Directors may consider a permanent facility; however, this is not a realistic goal today. For now, we will busy ourselves with getting a digital online archive developed for and promoted to the body piercing community, including professionals, researchers, and the general public. If the inaugural exhibitions of 2015 are well received, we will continue each year with new display themes as part of the annual conference experience.

Additionally, part of our medium-range goals is to form and build alliances with established archives that already have or are committed to receive collections of our history. We will be announcing some exciting collaborative developments very soon!

The Body Piercing Archive committee would like to give a special thank you to Barry Blanchard and Tod Almighty for their service and support. The richness and diversity of the history of body piercing can only be preserved and shared with community participation.

Contact information:

Please direct all general inquiries to:

• Body Piercing Archive: archive@safepiercing.org
• Future website: www.bodypiercingarchive.org

Current Committee members:

• Paul R. King – Committee Chair & APP Treasurer
• Brian Skellie – Committee Member & APP President
• Matte Erickson – Committee Member
• Becky Dill – Committee Member
• Kendra Berndt – Committee Member & The Point Co-Editor