By Eden Thomson / Skindependent
Photos by Martin Booth
Point 83: Suspensions (E.T.)
Posts by Caitlin McDiarmid — APP Administrator
Point 83: Suspensions (H.F.)
By Havve Fjell
Photo: Luna Duran
Twisted Bodies, 2018
Photos by Helene Fjell
Point 83: Suspensions (D.T.)
By Daniel Thomas
by Stelarc & Håvve Fjell
Håvve Fjell
Shadow Suspension, Dallas Suscon, 2013.
Photo: Luna Duran
There is a movement of suspensions being used as a contemporary art form, but it’s definitely not a new concept. A Cyprus-born, Australian performance artist named Stelarc was creating artwork with suspension since the ‘70s before the modern suspension movement was really even a thing. Stelarc had some breathtaking work. For me, his 1980 installation of “sitting/swaying” at the Tamura Gallery in Tokyo, Japan will always have a place in my heart for its pure beauty. Stelarc began with 18 rocks equalling his weight attached to a circle of eyebolts in the ceiling, using ropes with slip knots. The other end of each rock was attached to a hook in Stelarc’s skin. As the performance began with Stelarc sitting in the center of the circle, each slip knot was released and he was lifted, slowly swaying until his body was completely counterbalanced in a seated position.
I have been fortunate enough to be involved in the creation of many of my visions for suspension and the visions of my dearest friends. One of my first real experiences with exhibiting suspension to the public as an art form was in early 2014. I had just moved to Christchurch, New Zealand – a city of around 375,000 people. Christchurch had been hit with a series of earthquakes that demolished the majority of their city. It was obvious that one of the coping strategies the city used was making art. The suspension team I was a member of, Skindependent, was asked to install a suspension inside a shipping container that had been converted into a downtown art gallery. We suspended one of our team members in a horizontal position facing down with lines filling the entirety of the container. The suspension was carefully designed and mapped out by our team leader, Eden Thomson. I was quite nervous about being involved in this because of the possible reactions. There were definitely some ruffled feathers from this creation, but the majority of the people were receptive and full of questions about what suspension was. I remember being uplifted by all the beautiful conversations with complete strangers about why we choose to suspend, and subsequently, we even inspired a few people to be suspended by the team later that year. I didn’t really think much of this; I just put it down to the people of Christchurch being more open-minded, and maybe because the Skindependent team had already been creating beautiful suspensions for many years prior.
Suspension facilitated by myself,
Misty Forsberg, and skin attendees
Photo by Lippie mfg
Each time that I was involved in a public demonstration with artistic suspension, this pattern continued, no matter where in the world we were. I would get a bout of anxiety about possible negative reactions, but they would never materialize. People were always so curious and open-minded. I only truly realized the effect that artistic suspensions could have after designing, and helping to create, a suspension at the Skin Project in New York City. Skin is an annual event, hosted by the Anchors Aweigh team, bringing practitioners from around the world together to create a gallery-style production. This event has done a great deal for the development of artistic suspension and continues to push boundaries each year for what is possible within this art form, but for me, this pushed boundaries in my own family. I come from a loving and supportive family, but they have made it clear that suspension is something that they would rather I was not involved in. After the event, I posted some photos online of this suspension and I received messages I never expected to see. My mother, father, and grandmother had all individually sent me messages of praise that meant so much to me. It wasn’t the praise that meant a lot; it was the beginning of acceptance of my involvement in something that I love so much.
I believe artistic suspension has a very special purpose and that is to create a form of wider acceptance for what we do. To me, suspension is a beautiful, empowering act. I see it in an entirely different light than the general public. People tend to see it as a form that is tortuous and is linked to a purely sadistic/masochistic motive. Often just the idea of suspension evokes emotions that will turn people’s stomachs and set boundaries that will prevent them from ever wanting to see this act.
I believe that art itself encourages us to challenge our own boundaries. People view art, not only for its ability to be visually pleasing, but also its thought-provoking nature, allowing us to act differently when something confronts us.
For those who suspend, regardless of the reason, it becomes more than just an act you do. It is something that becomes a crucial part of your identity, so finding a way to bridge that gap is exceptionally important. Ask a suspension practitioner what their favourite part of suspending a first-timer is and often their response will be, “that first suspension smile”, the look on the suspendee’s face when their feet first leave the ground and the realization that they have done something that moments ago, they were more than likely telling themselves was entirely impossible. I can’t even count the number of times that I have facilitated a suspension for someone and later heard that their elation of self-empowerment had been crushed by some degree of strain within the relationship between them and their family, even though they found it to be a positive, uplifting experience. I don’t think suspension will ever be something that is completely off the taboo list, particularly in a society that is constantly seeking comfort, and rejecting the idea of pain having any positive connotations. Regardless, I love the idea that working with beautiful lines can create a piece of art that attaches to the hooks, facilitating the ability for people to see suspension for the beauty it has behind the eyes of the suspendee.
Point 83: Fakir Musafar
Interview by Sean Dowdell
Reprinted from Inkspired Magazine, Issue 26 with permission of the publisher
Why was I obsessed to modify my body? Why would I abandon the comfort of the status quo for the unknowns of body modification and ritual? I did it primarily because I was curious and bored with the status quo. In retrospect, probably for the same reasons early explorers risked the hazards of sailing uncharted seas. And like explorers of the past, present and future seeking rewards of some kind: treasure or knowledge. In my journey I sought to explore the seas of consciousness, my own inner self. The most personal and accessible vehicle was my own body. During my 50 plus years of sailing via body ritual, I have found some of the same reasons I set sail in the body rituals of other cultures.”
“EPILOGUE,” Body Play: My Journey—Fakir Musafar
Sean Dowdell: Let’s start with your age, where you were born, and the city you live in now.
Fakir Musafar: I am presently 83, born in 1930 in Aberdeen, South Dakota (which was then on the Sissiton Sioux Indian reservation). I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1955.
SD: Can you tell us where you came up with the name, “Fakir Musafar” and why?
FM: In 1977, Doug Malloy and then icons in the tattoo industry (like Ed Hardy and Sailor Jerry) decided to hold the FIRST international tattoo convention in Reno, Nevada. There was no piercing industry then as such, only Jim Ward and me. We were invited to participate and bring a spectacular show for the closing event. Doug asked me to do all the practices I had adopted from other cultures: bed of nails, bed of swords, etc. for the show. But he felt my regular given name was not memorable enough for the event. Not good for publicity. So he asked me if I had a special pet name I could use. I respected and honored a 12th century Sufi called Fakir Musafar who said to get close to the divine, you should pierce yourself. I adopted that name for the show; after the event the name was remembered and stuck.
SD: Fakir, you are known to a lot of us fellow body piercers as the Father of the Industry, what are your thoughts regarding that statement?
FM: Jim Ward is actually the Father of the Modern Piercing Industry (he commercialized it) and Doug Malloy is the Grandfather (he championed it). My job has been to educate. I am widely known as the “Father of the Modern Primitive Movement.” Piercing and a whole lot more, espousing a whole different attitude about “body.”
SD: How do you feel about the fact that many people think of you as a role model or icon?
FM: Because I was a pioneer and brought something new into our Western Culture, I became an icon. I was #1 in this regard and my teaching was by example not proselytizing. I was driven by an urge to share, not ego driven.
SD: What specifically in other cultures prompted you to want to learn more about your body and at what age did you start the exploration?
FM: I grew up surrounded by Native American culture, friends, customs and vibes. This was more comfortable for me than Western Christian Culture of the white settlers in South Dakota where I lived. Later, I found that Lakota Sioux and Mandan customs and beliefs were much the same as Hindu and Sufi customs and beliefs. My early explorations began at age 12. See attached my story from “Bodies Under Siege.” I had my first out-of-body experience at age 17 trying the bondage trancing ritual of Eskimo shaman.
Photos taken by Doug Malloy of the entertainment at the Reno ITTA tattoo convention in 1977 where Fakir made his public debut.
SD: When or how did you discover that through pain, one can connect with inner self and conscience?
FM: At age 12 to 16 by trying some of the practices like Sun Dance of the Lakota and Ball Dance of Hindu devotees. Later in life when I visited other cultures, especially Hindu culture in Malaysia, and tried their body rituals with hook pulls, Kavadi and suspensions. However, PAIN is NOT my God! The notion of “pain” only exists in Western Culture.
SD: Who specifically would you consider to have had a large influence on your life direction in regards to body enhancement and manipulation and why?
FM: My own inner self, then by examples of other seekers via body ritual, the inner understandings of other cultures.
SD: I read in another interview with you in which was mentioned that “you had befriended some of your local Indian tribesmen and started to learn about them as people and their culture.” What was it that prompted you to participate in your first ceremony with them, and what was it?
FM: I was bored and wanted to experience something outside the limited dimensions of the culture I was living in. I did my first permanent body piercing at age 14, my first mini Sun Dance ritual and out-of-body experience at age 17, my first tattoo at age 19 (self-made).
SD: Were you accepted entirely by the Indians that you were around or were there some that didn’t want the outside influence from you?
FM: Yes, I have always been understood and accepted by the Native American tribes where I lived. Later by other Native Americans and Tamil Hindus in Malaysia and some Sufis. I connect with them all on an energetic level. They can usually “read” energy.
SD: How would you describe pain? How are you able to overcome it so easily?
FM: Again, PAIN is NOT my God. The idea and emotions behind the word “pain” are strictly a Western, Christian and modern notion. Pain is merely intense physical sensation. Proper mindset and training, as in some other cultures, allows one to accept ever increasing sensation and convert it into an ecstatic state. There are physical changes, like release of endorphins, followed by trance and freedom of consciousness from the material world. What is called “pain” can open doors to “bliss”. One can only learn this through personal experiences. In my case, body rituals including those of body piercing, tattooing, suspensions and pulls.
SD: Do you wrestle with the fact that most people want their piercings for simply aesthetic reasons and miss some of the important ritualistic meanings in them?
FM: Yes, I have a problem with this. These people lack the education, training and guidance to understand tattoos as “magic marks,” piercings as movers of energy and body rituals involving intense physical sensation as doorways to spirit.
Fakir and Jim Ward sundancing for the
documentary film Dances Sacred and
Profane, Wyoming, 1982. Photos by
Charles Gatewood.
SD: When, why and how did you decide to start your piercing school?
FM: After we launched the modern body piercing movement in the 1970’s, the sexual and spiritual aspects stayed pretty much intact until the mid I980s. Then body piercing became popularized, commercial, and mainstream. By 1990, the beauty and intent of the practices got somewhat lost, as well as the skills and practical knowledge to do safe and reasonable piercing. I started Fakir Intensives in 1991 as an educational enterprise to counter this trend.
SD: Were there many obstacles to overcome in doing so? If so, what were they?
FM: Everyone who could get a clamp and needle thought they were a piercer. Many mistakes were being made with BAD outcomes. The energy movement and spiritual aspects of body piercing were being mostly ignored. Out of conscience, I felt I had to do something to counteract the mad rush to “mutilate” and “decorate.”
SD: What piercers are you most proud of teaching and seeing their success?
FM: At Fakir Intensives, we have trained and educated some 1200 piercers since 1991. Many of them are now captains of the industry with some of the the best long term successes in the industry. Fakir trained piercers are in studios all over the U.S. and the world. We set the standards which others try to match. I am especially proud to have been a part of the establishment of the APP and of the Fakir Intensives instructors who are now on the APP Board of Directors.
a ritual, Valhalla Ranch, California, 1983.
Photo by Mark I. Chester.
SD: Is the piercing school successful?
FM: Of course. We have become a de facto standard in the industry.
SD: Are you surprised at the immense popularity of piercing today?
FM: Yes, never thought contemporary culture was ready for it. But a bit disappointed by some of the results.
SD: What advice would you say to someone who wants to get into piercing but isn’t quite sure how?
FM: Get educated on the skills, health, safety, energy movement and spirit of the craft. Yes, it is a craft with a little bit of magic thrown in.
SD: What are your thoughts on some of the heavy body modification that is going on today?
FM: Yuck! Much of it was misappropriated from other cultures and has gone “off the rails.” Respect for the originators and Mother Nature is very much needed or there will be a lot of physical, psychological, social, and spiritual damage.
SD: What are your ideas for your future in the next 5-10 years; what would you like to be doing or accomplishing?
FM: I only hope I have been a positive influence on something newly brought in contemporary culture.
SD: Is there anything that you would like readers to know about you that isn’t common knowledge?
FM: I am an ordinary man who simply heard the sound of a different drummer.
See BODY OF GOD: www.hulu.com/watch/531912
Point 83: The Mentor Program
By Cale Belford, APP Mentor Program Coordinator
Well it’s that time of year again, and the Mentor Program is in full effect! If you are attending the annual APP Conference for the first time, then you are probably feeling overwhelmed and a little lost. Don’t fear! We have this amazing program in place to help you with your Conference experience!
So what exactly is the Mentor Program? It’s an incredible outreach system created by Ryan Ouellette in 2009; the idea was to essentially build small families that can work together as a group and lean on each other for support during the APP Conference. We have seen amazing progress with new attendees and have had wonderful feedback when it comes to the program. We look forward to continuing this process for years to come.
Our mentors are experienced conference goers and seasoned piercers who want to ensure that the new attendees have an outstanding time. To pair mentors and mentees, we use a survey system conducted by the program coordinator to create Mentor Teams based on similar interests, areas of knowledge, and class schedule needs. These small groups consisting of a mentor and two to three mentees will help to assist and encourage each other and provide beneficial headway to the conference experience as a whole. Mentors are here to support you if you become overwhelmed or require a little reassurance, if you want assistance with your class schedule, or perhaps just give you advice on where to find the best tacos or the most delicious vegan burger. It is essential to take full advantage of this opportunity! Many mentors and mentees develop connections with each other that last for years!
If you plan on attending Conference for the first time and have questions that you would like answered, need help selecting your classes, or you would simply like to have a friend before arriving in Vegas, then the APP Mentor Program is here to help! If you are a first or second year attendee and would like assistance from a mentor chosen specifically for you, please email mentors@safepiercing.org with MENTEE in the subject line. Be sure to include your name, telephone number, and other contact information in the email. There is technically no deadline to sign up as a mentee, but the earlier you enroll the more you will get out of the program. We cannot wait to meet you!
We genuinely want each and every one of our new attendees to get the most out of their conference experience and hope what the Mentor Program offers makes this possible. If you have any questions about the Mentor Program, becoming a mentor, or being a mentee at Conference, please do not hesitate to contact Cale at mentors@safepiercing.org.
I have been part of the mentor program since the inception. I’ve had mentees from all over the world, and enjoy helping make their conference experience one to remember. I’ve helped from beginning to end of Conference helping them pick classes, introducing them to other piercers, as well as follow up with them when Conference ends. I still keep in contact with some of the mentees and have worked side by side with a couple of them. I really enjoy seeing people who have been mentees step up and mentor others knowing they are a little overwhelmed their first year with so many people. If anyone sees myself or others walking around with Mentor Badges feel free to ask any questions you may have. I’m looking forward to seeing all the old faces as well as meeting a bunch of new ones.
Even before I went to my first Conference, I thought the Mentor Program was such a wonderful idea. I remember the very thought of being in such a huge city and only having a few people out of hundreds there that I knew filling me with panic. I asked a friend about the Mentor Program and if I should sign up to get a mentor. They convinced me not to saying, “you’ll know plenty of people there, you’ll have a blast!” While they were mostly right on both counts, I still wish I’d taken the opportunity to sign up with the program. Not only would I have had a greater feeling of security, but also had the chance to make one more friend who I might not have made otherwise.
I knew being a conference mentor was something I would want to do in the future when I, myself, had become more comfortable at the event. Being able to be a conference mentor to a new attendee is an extension of our ability to help others in a very meaningful way. I’m extremely grateful other like-minded piercers took the initiative to create such a wonderful program.
I have been involved with the Mentor Program for a few years and I love it! Spanish is my first language, and my ability to also speak Portuguese and English has allowed me to be become a much need- ed mentor to international attendees. It makes me happy to help attendees break the language barrier, and provide them with a more authentic experience at Conference. This platform for mentorship is fantastic for building a strong relationship with attendees who need guidance. I have built friendships over the years with my mentees and plenty of them still contact me with piercing questions, membership questions, or just a place to crash while they’re in town.
Point 83: The Body Piercing Archive Presents: The Perforated Body: An Exploration of Piercing Performance
This year, the Body Piercing Archive (BPA) is celebrating performance artists that have pierced their bodies from the past to present. In our exhibit we examine the methods and motivations which utilize perforation as an element of powerful performance. See the Conference schedule for free guided tours led by artists and scholars.
EXHIBIT HOURS:
Tuesday 10 am–6 pm Wednesday 10 am–6 pm Thursday 10 am–6 pm Friday 10 am–1 pm
RECOMMENDED TOURS:
TUESDAY
- 10:00 am–10:30 am Tour Guide: Paul King
- 12:00 pm–12:30 pm Tour Guide: Steve Joyner
- 2:00 pm–2:30 pm Tour Guide: Dr. Dominic Johnson
- 4:00 pm–4:30 pm Tour Guide: Lukas Zpira
WEDNESDAY
- 10:00 am–10:30 am Tour Guide: Dr. Julian Carter
- 12:00 pm–12:30 pm Tour Guide: Allen Falkner
- 2:00 pm–2:30 pm Tour Guide: Lukas Zpira
- 4:00 pm–4:30 pm Tour Guide: Ron Athey & Darryl Carlton
THURSDAY
- 10:00 am–10:30 am Tour Guide: Ron Athey & Darryl Carlton
- 12:00 pm–12:30 pm Tour Guide: Dr. Dominic Johnson
- 2:00 pm–2:30 pm Tour Guide: Allen Falkner
- 4:00 pm–4:30 pm Tour Guide: Steve Joyner
FRIDAY
- 10:00 am–10:30 am Tour Guide: Paul King
Point 83: Conference Performance Art Highlights
The photo first appeared in issue 49 of Piercing Fans
International Quarterly, 1996
Piercing in Performance:
Recollections from Five Artists
The artists will discuss some highlights of their ca- reers and look back at thematic arcs and motivations for their use of the body in performance.This evening’s event is in three parts: Allen Falkner, Steve Joyner, Lukas Zpira and then Ron Athey with Darryl Carlton. (Open to All)
Speakers:
Ron Athey was born in 1961. Self-educated (not to mention schooled) in the Westcoast punk and exper- imerimental music scenes, he started making noise and body-based performance work with his partner Rozz Williams in 1980, under the name PE. Ron Athey & Co.’s ‘90s work is known as the torture trilogy; it was often a direct or esoteric response to the AIDS pandemic, bodMod, the queer body, the polemics of blood. Solo work and operatic collaborations include Solar Anus, The Judas Cradle, Sebastiane, and the automatism opera, Gifts of the Spirit. Athey is a visiting lecturer at Roski School/USC, teaching a seminar on the history of California-centric countercultures, and periodically facilitates immersive performance art workshops.
Lukas Zpira is a body modification artist, nomadic performer, documentor of the contemporary fringes, and one of the major figures of the contemporary un- derground.
His works, closely related to nouveau realism, dif- fered in style to his writing and photography, which were far more influenced by surrealism and Dadaism, notably Duchamps and Man Ray’s rayographs. It was in 1993 that he took on the name Lukas Zpira, an anagram inspired from the surrealists. Multiple experiences and various exhibitions still left him unsatisfied, and he felt he had quickly reached the limits of his medium. He left the collective in 1995 to turn towards body art.
Soon after, Lukas opened Body Art/Weird Faktory in Avignon, the first studio in France dedicated to body modification.
In early 2004, in Japan, Lukas Zpira developed and wrote the body hacktivism manifesto, an artistic and political movement that asseverates the corporal biodiversity facing beauty standards imposed by Hollywood. More inspired by the bestial extra-terrestrials of Star Trek than the tribal references of the modern primitive movement, this activism of a new genre asserts the heritage of science fiction in the battle for body autonomy.
Additional Speakers:
Darryl Carlton, Allen Falkner, and Steve Joyner
A Fire in My Belly (1986–7).
Photo from issue 49 of
Piercing Fans International Quarterly, 1996.
Body Probe:
A History & Theory of Piercing in Performance Art
Since the late 1960s, performance artists have challenged the limits of art—and frequently courted controversy—through practices of strategic wounding or self-injury. Piercing the skin has been a core technique for testing the performing body’s capacity for pain, pleasure, or endurance—alongside controlled cutting or scarification, repetitive, or sustained action over prolonger durations, sadomasochistic techniques, or the appropriation of medical technologies, including surgery. This lecture will survey a range of uses of piercing in performance; and situate the use of piercing among a broader range of uses of pain, endurance, and body modification in art and performance. I will then proceed to distinguish piercing as a distinct technique or technology in performance art, by teasing out what might be uniquely meaningful in the probing and puncturing of skin, and the spectacle of the permeability of bodies. (Open to All)
Speakers:
Dominic Johnson is Reader (Associate Professor) in Performance and Visual Culture in the School of English and Drama, at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Glorious Catastrophe: Jack Smith, Performance and Visual Culture (2012); Theatre & the Visual (2012); and The Art of Living: An Oral History of Performance Art (2015). He is the editor of five books, including most recently Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey (2013); and (with Deirdre Heddon) It’s All Allowed: The Performances of Adrian Howells (2016). From 2005 to 2012, his frequently bloody performances (solo and in collaboration with Ron Athey) were shown around the world, including at festivals of performance and live art in Copenhagen, Ljubljana, Rome, Toronto, Vienna, Zagreb, and elsewhere, and throughout the United Kingdom, including most notably at the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow, and at the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of ‘Gay Icons’.
Point 83: My Journey with Fakir
By Jef Saunders, APP President
Fakir with Jef’s son Simon, wife Laura Jane Leonard, and Jef himself. Photo by Ken Coyote
On May 4th, 2018, Fakir Musafar posted a farewell message on his Facebook account: “The time has come for me to inform you that Fakir’s shelf life is running out. I have been fighting stage 4 lung cancer since last October, and I am near my expiration date….” While I have known about Fakir’s diagnosis for months, witnessing Fakir make his short time remaining public really hit home. The outpouring of emotion, thanks, and support from all over the world has been quite a thing to behold. I’m confident the letters, cards, and photos you send are deeply appreciated by both Fakir and his wife Cleo, and may provide an air of closure.
My journey with Fakir began over 20 years ago, the way it has for so many others: through reading Modern Primitives. I was struck by the audacity it took to modify one’s body in so many different ways, all of it done long before body modification was an accepted element of Western culture. He seemed larger-than-life, brilliant, and enigmatic beyond description. Who was this man, and how had he developed this devotion to piercing, corsetry, and suspension?
It wasn’t long before I met him in person, in the spring of 1999. I remember thinking to myself, “I hope I look as good as this guy does when I’m in my fifties,” not realizing I was taking a class from a man in his late sixties. Fakir’s apparent defiance of his age turned out to be nothing compared to the impact his Basic Piercing Workshop had on my life. I learned directly from Fakir about the cultures he admired and about what compelled him to modify his own body. I was exposed firsthand to the ritual and spiritual experience that piercing and body art could be, and I was awakened to a perspective on body play that came from the immersive experience of the workshop. Fakir and his Intensives changed me forever.
I felt compelled to revisit the magic in the Fakir classes. Within eighteen months I had attended his Basic, Branding, and Advanced Intensives. Five years later I was visiting regularly, at times even driving from Rhode Island to San Francisco, just to experience a class. In 2005 I started teaching for Fakir, and I’ve grown increasingly devoted to the unique quality of the workshops the Fakir Intensives deliver. For Fakir, however, teaching the body arts is really only half the story.
It’s difficult to explain the amazing life he has led. You may be aware that Fakir has been an advertising executive, a military demolitions expert, and a lifelong photographer. You might not know that he was a magician, a ballroom dancer, and a pioneering corset designer. There’s a unicycle in his garage, surrounded by shelves of piercing supplies, rigging for human rituals, and Body Play magazines. The man has lived that kind of life.
I’ve had the good fortune to grow close to Fakir, first as a student, and then as an instructor, but more significantly, as a friend. He is the patriarch of my chosen family, and I can say without hyperbole that the most important relationships in my life all trace back to Fakir, the Fakir Family, and the Fakir Intensives in some way So, although I write this column with a heavy heart. I’m thankful that Fakir chose to inform the broad piercing community about his condition, providing anyone who has felt his substantial impact the opportunity to reach out to him by sending a card, a photo, or a letter before he moves on to the unseen world. Through this considerate gesture, Fakir is showing us once again the type of person he is, and the extraordinary value he places on human connections. I truly hope you’ll take him up on it.
My journey with Fakir resonates as one of the greatest joys of my life. Thank you, Fakir. Your contributions to body art will be celebrated by our community for all time, and I, personally, have been forever blessed by your influence in my life. Your example and guidance have led me not only to evolve into the piercer I am today, but more importantly, the person I have become.
Merry Meet, Merry Part, and Merry Meet Again!
Point 83: Point of View
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN
circus performer from the 1890s
Remember grandma’s junk that you couldn’t give away ten years ago and ended up sending to the Salvation Army or the dump? Just look at the prices they’re charging for it now that it’s become “collectable.”
Some of us who are a little older may even have seen a revival in popularity of the fads and fashions of our youth. Anyone for disco, bell bottoms, platform shoes, lava lamps, mood rings?
There are a lot of things in life like that somehow come full circle. Assuming you live long enough, it’s bound to happen to you too.
Piercing as a performance medium isn’t anything all that new, come to think of it. Just how many hundreds of years have Indian sadhus been working some dusty street corner, a skewer through their cheeks or hooks in their flesh, begging a few coins from passersby?
While today’s performers may not be doing anything new, there can be no doubt as to the great range and variety of imaginative ways in which they are incorporating piercing into their acts.
Some of this issue’s featured performers use their piercings to perform amazing feats of strength or endurance to entertain and astonish their audience. Take, for instance, the Torture King or Mr. Lifto (shown here). This tradition has roots among traveling circus sideshow acts: human and animal freaks, fire eating (see Chuk’s story in this issue), and sword swallowing, to name a few. In this type of performance, the body and its limits tell the whole story. We are compelled to watch these variations on the human condition, to find bits of ourselves in the “Other.”
Piercing as metaphor is often used in more high-concept performance art. Stelarc, Orlan, and David Wojnarowich are among the many high-profile artists who make statements using temporary piercings and/or body alterations. In this issue Justin Chin explores the notion of immunity and transmissible diseases by “infecting” himself with his own blood. Dave Tavacol gives us a glimpse into an unpleasant but not so far-fetched future, putting a piercing-related twist on cultural disapproval suggestive of The Scarlet Letter.
As many of us know, piercings can project one into an altered state of consciousness. The feats of Amazonian shamans, Indian fakirs and sadhus, and the grand spectacle of a tribal rite of passage all bear historical testimony to this tradition. Mr. Fab is one of a growing number of exponents of the neotribal performance path, using piercings to share these ancient experiences with the audience.
Drag queens are some of the most elaborate performers of all, using familiar paraphernalia to subvert our comfortable understanding of culture, gender roles, and socially acceptable behavior in a theater of the absurd. As Trauma Flintstone, Cirus, Mark Pritchard, and Fennel explain, piercing can be one more theatrical prop. Fennel’s performances play out a particularly astute perspective on a common breed of nihilistic club performance currently much in vogue. In classic drag oneupmanship, he gets even by beating them at their own game.
Many of the performance artists who appear in this issue have been a part of the Ron Athey show. These include Crystal Cross, Julie Tolentino Wood, Marina Vain (Spike), and Paul King. They utilize piercing as metaphor, crude spectacle, punishing absurdity, powerful, bitter humor, and panache to make strong statements about AIDS, gender, homosexuality, religion (especially Christianity), fetishism, and outsider status. Their ever-expanding international audience bears testimony to the fact that piercing and performance are a naturally matched pair, centuries old and yet still fresh, with the power to move the viewer to another state of awareness.
—Michaela Grey & Jim Ward
Point 83: Conference, 2018 from Editor Jim Ward
It warms my heart to see this issue of The Point and brings back fond memories of issue 49 of Piercing Fans International Quarterly. Published by Gauntlet in 1996, it featured more than a dozen performance artists active at that time.
In 1996, suspension had not become the popular pastime it is today. Only one photo in the 64 page issue features it, but there were plenty of imaginative ways in which artists found to express themselves with piercings and blood.
The opposite page features the editorial Michaela Grey and I wrote for the issue. The names may have changed, but perfomance art is as vital today as it was in 1996.
Photo by Dkon Lewis.