Author Archives: BME

Becoming a Word [Guest Column]

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Becoming a Word
by iam:saram

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As a reader, writer, and outspoken speaker, I have a lot of respect for words. The right words are worth a lot in life. People may say that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” but the true power lies in the words themselves. Written and spoken language is truly an amazing, indispensable thing. Where would we be without words? Words can inform, hurt, persuade, pacify, and document. Words can start and stop a war. Words are supposed to be protected in the United States, but some people want to censor and silence the words they don’t like. Putting something into words can give it power, or take power away from it. Words can be beautiful to look at, and beautiful to hear spoken. They can also be offensive or disgusting. One word may have many meanings or connotations. I believe that words are power.

However, we frequently take words for granted, especially the simple ones we use all the time — the conjunctions and pronouns and articles. We say them and write them every day, without thinking twice about it. Without them, language would be completely different!

When I heard about Shelley Jackson’s Skin project, I was intrigued. Here was an author combining concept art and experimental literature. Ms. Jackson’s project would put each word of her new short story on an individual. By tattooing the appointed word onto the body, each person would “become” that word. Each word in this story is equally important and identically recorded. The book will have one edition, a “first printing,” so to speak, on the flesh of thousands of people. It could be the largest single volume of literature ever published, easily weighing a few tons!

I contacted Ms. Jackson about the project, expressing my interest based on my literary background and love of words. I’ll admit it — I’m the kind of girl that likes to page through the dictionary from time to time. I’m a voracious reader, and my college degree is in English Language and Literature. I’m a fan of literacy, correct spelling, proper punctuation, and good grammar. I appreciate a big vocabulary. I immediately heard back, and I was in. I received a waiver to sign and return (acknowledging the risks of participation and the rules of the project). I sent it back and anxiously awaited the arrival of my word.

 
 
ABOUT SKIN & SHELLEY JACKSON

Writer Shelley Jackson invites participants in a new work entitled “Skin.” Each participant must agree to have one word of the story tattooed upon his or her body. The text will be published nowhere else, and the author will not permit it to be summarized, quoted, described, set to music, or adapted for film, theater, television or any other medium. The full text will be known only to participants, who may, but need not choose to establish communication with one another.

Participants will be known as “words.” Only the death of words effaces them from the text. As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words.

Readers interested in becoming words should visit Shelley Jackson’s website at ineradicablestain.com and visit the “SKIN: A MORTAL WORK OF ART” subpage. There are also additional writings on the page if you’d like to see what she’s all about first. As of this writing there are still words available.

 

I spent a lot of time considering what words I might get, and what words I would like. The text of the story is top secret, so I had no idea what words would be available. I knew that some words might have punctuation attached, and some could be offensive or objectionable. The rules for the project explain that a participant can reject his or her assigned word, but they cannot apply for another. You accept the first word, or you don’t participate. I was a little nervous — what if my word was bad? I really wanted to be part of the project, but not at the cost of a tattoo I didn’t really want. It was a long two weeks before I got my word.

I had decided that the best odds were on an immensely common word, like “a” or “you” or “the.” These simple words are the most commonly used in the English language (just as their counterparts are common in other languages). These words are elegant but overlooked. They are the backbone of every famous book, story, or speech. My inner geek was rather excited by the idea of getting one of these. On the other hand, I supposed I could get something random, like “oven” or “together” or “agronomy.” Since I don’t know what’s in the story, I could imagine any number of words that could turn up!

The envelope arrived at long last. I wished one last time for a truly great word, and opened it. It was as I had expected — I received “the.” I assume that many people got a “the,” or an equally common word. The story probably contains hundreds of these words. We could form a “the” club!

When I mentioned this to other people, I got very mixed reactions. Some people were interested, most were surprised, and a good number had some misgivings about getting a tattoo of the word “the.” I explained, as best I could, my rationale behind participating and my interest in this particular word. I like “the.” It’s small, short, and even a beginning reader knows what it is. It’s taken for granted and entirely essential. I think it’s a nice-looking word, too.

The project rules state that the word must be tattooed in a “book font,” so I chose a thick version of Footlight MT Light. I looked at dozens of potential fonts, but this one really appealed to me. I printed out several different sizes and toyed around with placement. Behind an ear? Inside my lip? On my back? I knew that the tattoo would be small, but it doesn’t exactly match anything I have so far. I don’t want to limit my future tattoo plans with one little “the.” I eventually chose a spot between two other tattoos and my scarification, on my left side. There was a little blank space that just called to me, the perfect spot for the tattoo.

I visited my friend Paul Keplinger at Curious Tattoo in College Park, Maryland, because I knew he’d do a good job (and I love to spend time with him). Paul does quick, solid blackwork — he did some scrollwork down my ribs and it looks great. I really think that just about anyone could pull off these little letters, but Paul seemed like the obvious choice. After explaining the project and the word to Paul (and everyone else in the shop), things were finally coming together. At three small letters, this is the quickest, smallest, and most simple tattoo I have ever gotten. Paul did it with a tiny little liner, and it was done in no time at all. The spot was a little sensitive, and the small liner felt very sharp, but it was through before I could even really start to feel much pain. One spot is a little thick, to compensate for where Paul made me laugh (goddammit), but I don’t think it’s very noticeable to anyone but myself. I think it looks great.


So now I am “the.” I am a definite article, derived from Old English. I may be small and simple, but you need me. You use me all the time. I give you power, and you give me power. I have become a word.

saram


Article by iam:saram. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online October 10th, 2003 by BMEzine.com LLC in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.

Body Modification: Rights & Responsibilities – Through the Modified Looking Glass

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Body Modification:
Rights & Responsibilities

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

– H. L. Mencken

They are not out to get you. They already have you.

You have no rights. Rights are nothing more than political contrivances, pure fictions of the system. To believe you have rights is to fall prey to the deception that freedom is derived from government when in fact government exists only to curtail freedom. What rights are provided in a political system may very well be reflective of certain core beliefs or fundamental values of the systems creators put in place to prevent or restrict the system’s regulation of certain areas of activity but those rights exist only as creations of the system. To be truly free one must exist outside of and beyond the reach of any governmental system. Whether or not the current state of the world even allows for this as a possibility is highly debatable. Regardless, very few people are prepared for or even interested in such an existence. To be so free is to be in a very precarious position — it is an existence without the benefits of government in terms of security and infrastructure and one of perceived outcast. So precarious, in fact, that most people upon consideration would prefer to take a degree of security in trade for giving up all but those rights delineated by a government. Would you rather be utterly on your own and completely free or do you prefer having laws and police and hospitals and various agencies for regulation and certification? Could you accept a world where other people do just what they want regardless of your ethical disdain or distaste?


Rights are never absolute. As they are created by a system that system will always allow for (in practice) the restriction of those rights. There is no conceptual ideal so great as to stop the actual workings of the machine. Go ask any protester in the holding cell if his constitutional right to free speech kept the police from shackling him and dragging him downtown. It may, however, be what eventually gets him out of the cell via the judicial process. Of course, it may not as well. Many times the actual practice of exercising ones rights is strictly limited to an arguably responsible manner. The classic example for free speech is yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre. Furthermore, many systems will deny or further restrict the rights of those with a history of ‘irresponsible’ behavior such as convicted felons being denied voting rights or gun ownership.

So what about body modification? Is it a right? Can it be construed so as to be covered by an existing right in our system of government? Under what pretense does the government regulate and restrict our complete freedom to do what we want with our bodies?

Freedom of speech, via the First Amendment, is probably the most obvious route towards addressing body modification in a political context — at least in the United States. The First Amendment states:


Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Through practice and interpretation “speech” has come to be seen in a broad context encompassing not just simple speech but also expression. Some have further decided to pro-actively interpret the intent of this amendment as a directive to the government not only to respect the free expression of the people but also to encourage a climate in which the people feel free to express themselves. It is through such policies that we can see the development of a common misconception about the First Amendment. It is meant only to ensure your right to make your speech and not to ensure that you will not be offended by the speech of others. However, in the aggressive efforts of government to satiate ‘squeaky wheels’ we can see them attempting to walk the fine line of restricting the speech of some in order to encourage the speech of others. Very often this is tied to issues of religion, with the dissenting non-believers demanding that all appearance of religious icons and expression be removed from public spaces and forums. I myself am not a believer in any religion and I do find the near constant bombardment I receive from many sources to be offensive. However, in the case of non-state funded or mandated expressions I am far happier putting up with the annoyance of their free speech than I would be attempting to walk on the border of hypocrisy by restricting their religious expressions in order to make me more comfortable in my expressions of non-belief*.

 
* I would like to note here though that so called ‘moments of silence’ or ‘silent meditation’ are complete bullshit. One need simply ask; ‘On what basis and authority is my speech being restricted to silence in favor of those around me who want to engage in silent prayer? Why am I not allowed to sing or dance or chatter per my want?’ If John wants to have a silent prayer beside me that is his right but it is not his right to have me forcibly silenced.

In terms of body modification, I think, it is important to realize that if you view your modifications as expressions to be covered by this ‘right’ then you must almost certainly also recognize the right of the person who calls you names to make their expressions of disapproval. And those voicing disapproval should keep in mind that voicing that disapproval comes at the cost of allowing the expression. Surely the ideal of creating an environment in which everyone can make personal expressions without fear or hostility or disapproval is a fine and noble goal but it is also one that fails the test of practicality in a world that contains diverse and often contradictory viewpoints. Furthermore, it should not be viewed as sufficient cause for the restriction of free speech as protected by the First Amendment. But this cuts both ways — just as you should not demand that your expressions through modification not be mocked under the First Amendment, those who disapprove should not be able to restrict your expressions simply because they find them distasteful.

And, in fact, this is not the traditional justification for such restrictions. The classic example, mentioned above, of screaming fire in a crowded theater is used to illustrate a situation in which the exercise of an individual’s right to free speech deserves to be restricted in that it creates and clear and present danger to the rest of the theatre goers who may be trampled or crushed in a rush to escape the fictitious fire. So, if body modification is a form of expression or speech as covered by the First Amendment then how can it be that the government can restrict or prohibit it via policies and legislation such as school piercing bans and the anti-tongue splitting bills popping up in many states.

Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.

– Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

In the case of school bans the argument is often made that students, who are often minors, do not enjoy the full rights and benefits of a normal citizen because as such they do have the same responsibilities. As they are not legal adults there are many instances in which they are not held to the same standards, one example would be contract law, as would an adult and since they cannot incur the same penalties for violations, they are not allowed the benefits. Another position is that the school environment represents a context within which there are greater needs at play which supercede those rights. I believe that Shannon more than adequately illustrated how patently false this claim is in his article on school policies. As for the former position, I think it is worth considering the vast difference between something like free expression and things like driving and gun ownership in terms of the needs and benefits of restricting the youth.

As for legislation such as the anti-tongue splitting bills, I think that as I pointed out in my column on the then pending Illinois legislation, such bills can often be traced to prejudiced politicians attempting to make clearly unconstitutional laws to enforce their prejudices upon others while also doing some self-aggrandizing soap box politics. They look to exploit a sure media draw in the form of body modification in order to further their careers at the expense of the rights of their constituencies.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

– Henry David Thoreau

Now let us get a little bit crazy.

The majority of modification related legislation has little to do with speech or expression in its content or intent. Along with many school level bans it is claimed that the motivation is one of public health and safety. And while many people, modified and not, will support such measures as requiring autoclave testing, gloves, courses in cross contamination and the like it remains to be shown that it is the responsibility and province of the government to put such regulations into place. Such regulations can make the process of getting tattoos or piercings safer but they are also very often used to promote the interests of certain parties or views (i.e. manufacturers of certain products being mandated into use, requiring certifications and memberships from specific associations, or effectively banning tattooing by requiring it be done by a doctor or with a doctor in attendance).

The government is not concerned with your health and well being as a matter of altruism. It is only concerned with your condition to the extent that a cattle rancher cares about the health of any individual or group of cows within his herd. And much like the rancher, the government takes action to regulate the procedures and hazards to which you are exposed because it owns you and feels that it is simply maintaining and protecting its property.

You are government property. They have laid claim to you as possession and currency. The slogans may read ‘Hearts and Minds’ but it is the ass they’re really after.

This is one of the fundamental aspects of the political world. People are resources just like metal deposits, forests, and so on. And similarly, governments lay claims based on their borders or historical precedent (the happenstance of the geography of your birth or your parents citizenship). If anything, people as citizens are the primary operating resource of competing governments. Look at the role of China in international politics over the last century and India’s increased presence — primarily based upon their large populations.

As such, governments are committed to the management and exploitation of this resource. Some may do so in a more caring way while others may use a Draconian efficiency. However, none will abide the population willfully making its own decisions on matters that affect their value as a resource. Think of the rancher analogy and imagine what steps would be taken towards cattle that display self-destructive or herd disruptive behavior. Now consider government attitudes and actions towards suicide, euthanasia, and to a lesser extent public declarations of self-ownership like many ritual body practices and body modification. Look at the abortion debates, the bottom line has always been one of the government is going to decide what women can legally do with their bodies. The argument of whether or not a procedure is allowed only logically follows after it is conceded that the government gets to make that choice and they get to make that choice because they are the ones that own the bodies.

I can only hope that this is as offensive to others as it is to me.

I see two basic ways of dealing with the situation as it stands.

  1. In order to gain more rights and freedom regarding our bodies and body modification it must impressed upon the system the value of allowing such freedom. If it can be shown that body modification can be beneficial then it would behoove the system to allow, if not promote it.
  2. The other option is to get enough people to deny the government’s position and claim to one’s body — to create a herd revolt. On an individual level, making such a denial could be very precarious and anyone choosing to do so should remember that a government is a system rather than a single entity and successfully navigating it on such a dangerous course is dependent upon breaking down and recognizing the individual components and people which make it up and exploiting them directly on that individual basis to the greatest possible extent.

As always, thank you for hanging in there with my rambling and making it to the end.

Lizardman Q & A, Round III – Through the Modified Looking Glass

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Lizardman Q & A – Round III

A lot of people here have been asking me if I’m going to apply myself when I go back to school next September. It’s such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean, how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don’t. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it’s a stupid question.

– Holden Caulfield
from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

From New York to Hollywood [Running The Gauntlet – By Jim Ward]

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2: From New York to Hollywood

In the early sixties I spent a couple of years at the University of Colorado in Boulder majoring in fine arts. Frequently on weekends I would go into Denver to cruise the gay bars.

As I recall there were two gay bars in downtown Denver: the Court Jester and the Tic-Toc Lounge. The Court Jester was fun for an occasional drag show, but the crowd was heavy on queens reeking of cologne. The Tic-Toc had a more collegiate, masculine crowd. It was there one night that I caught the eye of a slightly older guy whose name turned out to be Bud. We developed a friendship and I saw him occasionally for a little hanky-panky. Several times we met up during his lunch hour at an inexpensive little Japanese hotel where no questions were asked. Early on Bud arranged a three-way with his lover Tom, but that wasn’t exactly a big success because Tom was very jealous and made it clear he didn’t want any competition. Though Bud and I enjoyed each other’s company, I didn’t consider myself a home wrecker. Thus by the time I ended up in New York, I had lost contact with Bud.

Consequently it came as something of a surprise when Bud showed up in Brooklyn one day in the company of my friend Steve. Turned out Bud was visiting New York and they had met at one of the leather bars.


Bud bares it all.

Bud was delighted to see me again and for the duration of his vacation we spent a lot of time together. By the time he had to return to Denver, romance was in the air. Bud wanted me to move back to Denver and live with him and Tom. He assured me that he’d talked it over with Tom and that everything was okay. What can I say? I was in enamored and fool enough to take the risk. I packed up my belongings, said good bye to friends, and took off for the mile-high city.

Bud and Tom had bought a small house in North Denver. Bud’s mother Vi lived on the main floor and did most of the cooking and household chores. Bud and Tom had the furnished basement to themselves.

I arrived to a chilly reception from Tom and Vi. Things were obviously not okay with them. As fond as I was of Bud, I also didn’t want to break up his relationship. Soon after arriving I took Tom aside and laid my cards on the table, making my intentions clear. It relieved a lot of the tension, and in time we got to be good friends. Although we regularly went out to the bars together and sometimes picked up one or more guys for a mini orgy, my relationship with Bud and Tom rapidly became one of roommates. Once it became clear that I wasn’t there to interfere, Vi too relaxed and came to depend on me to help her with grocery shopping and other errands.

It wasn’t long before I connected with a handful of guys who were interested in starting a motorcycle club. We got together a few times and founded the Rocky Mountaineers Motorcycle Club which, like the Energizer bunny, is still going.

One of the other members was a hot daddy type named Rod. He rode a big Harley hawg, and I thought he was sexy as hell. We got to be good buddies and did a lot of riding together in more ways than one.


Rod on his Harley.
   

Astride the Big Shit Apparatus.

For some time I had wanted a motorcycle of my own. With advice from other club members and Rod’s promise to teach me to ride — and even though the weather was beginning to get cold — I started looking for a bike. I found one in the newspaper that was within my budget and ended up buying it. It was a BSA, a product of the worst possible British engineering. I was soon convinced BSA stood for Big Shit Apparatus, though friends assured me it stood for Bastard Stopped Again. If nothing else it gave me something on which to learn to ride and get my license. But it was clear that taking the BSA on a lengthy road trip would be risky.

There was debate among club members over the various merits and shortcomings of different bikes. For prestige and image nothing beat a Harley, but having ridden on long trips with Rod I knew their vibration was butt numbing. They were also expensive, and, unless you were a bodybuilder, impossible to lift if you happened to take a spill. BMWs were favored by some. With a drive shaft instead of a chain, they were quieter and virtually vibration-free, and had a reputation for reliability. But they too were expensive.

Someone mentioned that there was a new entry into the American market from Italy, something called a Moto Guzzi. One of the local dealers had started to carry them. I checked them out, took one for a test drive, and was favorably impressed. Like the BMW they had a drive shaft which gave them a quieter, smoother ride. They were also significantly less expensive than a BMW. This, I decided, was the bike for me, but I had to figure out how to purchase it. I didn’t have the cash, and I hadn’t lived in Denver long enough to establish any kind of credit record. To my amazement, Tom, without my even asking, volunteered to co-sign a loan. The Guzzi was mine.


Ready to ride on my new Moto Guzzi.

During the five years I lived in Denver, the Rocky Mountaineers organized a number of motorcycle runs. Guys from other clubs, even from other states, rode in to participate. On one of these I met a couple of guys from Omaha, one of whom was really taken with my nipple piercings and asked me to pierce his. This was the first time I ever pierced someone else. We shopped around and found a couple of earrings that would work, and I got a nice new pushpin and a fresh wine bottle cork. Crude as it was, he braved the process and went back to Omaha with probably the first pair of pierced nipples anyone in that town had ever seen.

My pierced nipples were also an inspiration for Bud, though he wanted something different. One night on his own he did a piercing in the center of his chest just below the clavicle. The piercing looked really hot with an open-neck shirt. But, alas, it wasn’t destined to last. Bud had the piercing for about a year during which it healed and appeared to be permanent. Then suddenly, like many surface piercings, it started to migrate. The skin became thinner and thinner and within a few days time healed out. By then Bud had decided not to try again.

The downside of being one of the first guys around with pierced nipples was that many of the men I played with simply had no clue what to do with them. They tended to avoid them completely or treat them like the dials on a radio. It frequently became necessary to explain some of the finer points of nipple play.

Still, I got a lot of enjoyment from my piercings, enough, in fact, to begin thinking about piercing my dick. Like many men I had a thin web of tissue (the frenum) between the head of the penis and the shaft. I thought it would be really erotic to put a piercing through what seemed a natural placement.

I had a local jeweler make a small white gold ring with abutted ends, about 3/8″ in diameter and about 12 gauge. Unfortunately many white gold alloys are very stiff and can’t be annealed (softened) the way yellow gold can. Consequently the ring was extremely difficult to open and close and required two pair of heavily padded pliers to do the job. Still I somehow managed to do the piercing and insert and close the ring.

But the piercing wasn’t destined to last. Since I really knew nothing about the nature of these things, I had no idea that the placement was wrong. It’s also possible that there was something in the white gold alloy that my body didn’t like. At any rate within a matter of weeks the piercing began to enlarge. The ring was hanging by a thread of tissue. There was no way to save the piercing; even removing the ring couldn’t save it. Within days the thread broke and the piercing was gone.

A motorcycle is less than ideal as one’s sole mode of transportation in a place where winters can be severe. Bundled up in a snowmobile suit I managed as long as the streets weren’t too icy. In really bad weather I would catch a ride to work with Bud and Tom who worked in the same neighborhood. It was becoming clear I needed a car.

Though generally reliable, my Moto Guzzi had a minor problem, which came close to destroying it. The breather valve would occasionally stick open allowing the oil to be siphoned out of the engine. This happened on a long trip with a friend who didn’t notice when the oil light came on which resulted in a damaged crankshaft. Although I was able to have it repaired the bike never sounded the same and had more vibration.

I don’t think that riding a motorcycle is, in itself, terribly dangerous. The major danger comes from people in cars who either don’t see you or deliberately try to do you harm by doing things like try to run you off the road. When a fellow biker lost a leg in a freak motorcycle accident on the way to one of our club runs, my enthusiasm for my cycle began to wane. Shortly thereafter I sold the bike and used the money as a down payment on a Volkswagen.

By the late sixties and early seventies, the influence of the hippie movement was being felt throughout society. Changing the tense of a Bob Dylan lyric, “The times they were a changing.” Many people were trying to find some meaning in their lives and were exploring ways to better understand themselves. Of course they were also looking for quick and easy fixes. To meet the demand, all kinds of therapists and self-help gurus were coming out of the woodwork. The Beatles were doing Transcendental Meditation. Werner Erhard was raking it in with EST, “a hodgepodge of philosophical bits and pieces culled from the carcasses of existential philosophy, motivational psychology, Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-cybernetics, Zen Buddhism, Alan Watts, Freud, Abraham Maslow, L. Ron Hubbard, Hinduism, Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, P.T. Barnum, and anything else that Erhard’s intuition told him would work in the burgeoning Human Potential market.” If those weren’t to your liking, you could chose from Zen, Yoga, Scientology, Silva Mind Control, Krishna Consciousness — the possibilities were endless. Unfortunately for every sincere and legitimate visionary, there was a snake oil salesman waiting with outstretched hand to take your money.

Thus it should come as no surprise that I joined a gay encounter group. One night a guy named Victor got to talking about something revolutionary called Primal Therapy. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but shortly thereafter I was browsing in a bookstore and noticed a copy of The Primal Scream by Arthur Janov, the book about the therapy that Victor had been talking about. It looked interesting, so I bought it and read it.

Janov’s premise was that as children almost everyone shuts down emotionally rather than experience rejection and loss of love from their parents. This repressed emotion is then expressed in countless neurotic and even psychotic ways. The cure comes when a person gets in touch with and expresses those shut down feelings and no longer has to “act them out.”

The book recounted the almost miraculous experiences of a number of people who had been through the therapy. Within a matter of months they had supposedly undergone life-altering transformations.

Janov claimed that homosexuality could be cured with Primal Therapy. I had long ago come to terms with my sexuality and was quite comfortable with it, so I didn’t find this claim compelling. The thing that suckered me in was the glimmer of hope that here was something that might help relieve the chronic depression that had plagued me since childhood. Well, I’m nothing if not gullible. After all if this therapy could entice celebrities such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, there much be something to it.

I sent my application to Janov’s Primal Institute in West Hollywood and flew there for an interview. Soon after I was notified that I had been accepted.

It was never my intent to stay in LA. I thought I would just take a leave of absence from my job for a few months and return to Denver a new man. It didn’t quite happen that way.

Right after Christmas, 1972, I flew to LA to start therapy. It soon became apparent that this was going to take longer than I had expected. I sent a letter to my boss explaining that I would need to be away from the job a while longer. I waited, but no response came. I returned to Colorado in February of 1973 to tie up some loose ends to discover he never received the letter. His wife who didn’t like me had intercepted it, and he, thinking I was not going to return, filled my position. There was no longer any urgency to return to Denver, so I packed up my VW and headed back to LA. Little did I realize that regardless of any therapeutic outcome, the direction of my life had changed.

Next: The Beginnings of the Modern Body Piercing Movement

Jim Ward is is one of the cofounders of body piercing as a public phenomena in his role both as owner of the original piercing studio Gauntlet and the original body modification magazine PFIQ, both long before BME staff had even entered highschool. He currently works as a designer in Calfornia where he lives with his partner.

Copyright © 2003 BME.com LLC. Requests to publish full, edited, or shortened versions must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published September 12th, 2003 by BME.com LLC in Tweed, Ontario, Canada

Jerome Abramovitch at the Montreal Tattoo Convention [Guest Column]

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Jerome Abramovitch
at the Montreal Tattoo Convention

"Good art can not be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise."

– Ezra Pound

Those of you — especially the women reading this — that have been to tattoo conventions know how aggressive the photographers from tattoo magazines can be. Some of them, including some “big name” ones have a reputation for aggressive hounding of women for photos, bordering on both sexual harassment and simply insulting. Those that do agree to go to their room for photos find themselves pressured to take their top off to “better show the tattoo on their wrist”, and when they refuse, find themselves the brunt of insults and sometimes even threats from the photographer’s biker associates.

Clearly BME has an interest in photographing at tattoo conventions, but we didn’t want to become part of a process that in my opinion engenders unhappiness in this community and produces at best snap-shots of tattoos that people could just as easily take at home with their digital camera. Enter Jerome Abramovitch.

(As Jean Cocteau said, “an artist cannot talk about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture”, so that’s why I’m writing this introduction, not Jerome.)

I first met Jerome in 1999 when he approached me not as a photographer, but as a performance artist who’d amputated his own finger as art, and held numerous official and unofficial world records for everything from the most play piercings in a session to being perhaps the most heavily voluntarily branded man in the world — some of you may have also seen him on the cover of the ModCon book, or doing his saline performances on various television shows. It was only later that I discovered what a talented photographer he was as well.

At the 2003 Montreal Tattoo Convention in Quebec, Canada, we set Jerome up with a photo booth and he went at the convention as a true artist, with the aim of taking beautiful portraits of the people he encountered, not some cheap thinly-veiled pornography to run in discount magazines advertising “home tattoo kits”. I am very proud to present to you the results of his work — as you can see, his background is first and foremost in portraiture, so more so than snapshots of tattoos, you’ll notice that the focus is on the people. As he told me, “people who happen to have tattoos, but it’s about them, not about the ink on their skin.”

Watch out for Jerome at future tattoo conventions and events shooting for BME. Until then, you can visit his website at chapter9photography.com where you can contact him about prints, portraiture, or just congratulate him on giving a much needed kick in the ass to the others out there shooting tattoo conventions by showing them a better way to do it. You can also find him on IAM as Jerome.

Shannon Larratt
September 11th, 2003


Text copyright © 2003 BMEzine.com LLC, photos copyright © 2003 Jerome Abromovitch. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online September 11th, 2003 by BMEzine.com LLC in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.

Lizardman Q & A, Round II – Through the Modified Looking Glass

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Lizardman Q & A
Round II

The soul, which to a reptile had been changed,
  Along the valley hissing takes to flight,
  And after him the other speaking sputters.

– Dante’s Inferno, Canto XXV

People seemed to enjoy the first Q & A — or at the very least they were inspired to come up with questions of their own. I got more than five times as many questions when I asked for submissions this time around. I went through and answered every one of them and then selected the ones I liked best at the moment — that moment being sometime late Sunday night wanting to finish up and watch Adult Swim on Cartoon Network (Aqua Teen Hunger Force!). If you asked a question and it isn’t here, don’t fear. I have it, and my response, saved for future use.

Let the games begin!

wldfire_1: What future modifications other than finishing the tattooing do you have planned in your transformation?

Finishing the tattooing is currently my main priority and other than that, some additional stretching of my piercings is the only definite plan left to be completed at this point. That said, I have a number of things under consideration and being researched, and I am always looking for future possibilities as they become available.

glider: When you sent me this email over four years ago (on the 11th of March, 1998), did you have any idea of the sheer immensity of what you’d help start?


From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: another tongue

Don’t know if you knew but there will be another split tongue very soon. I will be taking Essie (of r.a.b.) in to Dr. Busino to have her tongue split on Friday morning. The ball keeps rolling and gathering momentum…

Erik

I didn’t have clue it would go as far as it has gone and continues to go. I was still very much joking about armies of forked tongued people then while happily getting to show others a way towards enacting their desires.

Clearly you are a role model for children, being bright and articulate, as well as unique, engaging, and funny to them. Children tend to want to emulate their idols; having pursued a university education yourself, is this something you would recommend? Has being “the academic freak” been helpful?

The last thing I want to be is anyone’s idol. Influence is acceptable but idol is too much. Being ‘the academic freak’ has had some advantages. Primarily it provides me with a ‘degree’ (pun intended) of credibility in the eyes of many people who might otherwise simply dismiss me as a nut, loser, or whatever. It also makes for a nice media hook.

My own feelings towards academia or more specifically the educational system in the US are fairly mixed. I think it suffers from a lot of fundamental problems and that in many cases people are better off getting away from it as much as possible. I come from a family of educators and while I respect their efforts they often seem like Sisyphus.

If someone were to ask me if they should go to college or beyond I would have to say that it depends very heavily on what they really want to do and how much of a burden it will be — student loans should not be taken lightly. On the other hand, if you get a free ride (I got a full academic scholarship for my BA; my decision to take loans for graduate school was a mistake), take it and enjoy the experience.

Why haven’t you worked more aggressively to complete the tattooing on your face? I think if it was me, I’d have completed my face before anything else since that’s what the public sees.

Oddly enough it’s the “being seen” aspect that has slowed it down at times. Knowing that I would be in public would often tend to motivate me to not work on my face so as not to be putting a healing tattoo on display and be unshaven due to the healing process. I have tried to have the work done in a pattern in public areas in order to be a bit less piecemeal in appearance. Also, for awhile I was thinking of not tattooing my scalp and going with dyed hair but ultimately I did and that created a whole new area that needed to be done.


What made you decide on the bluish green, versus a bright yellow-green like the background of your IAM page?

Thanks to my tattooing I have become acutely aware of color perception variances and the impact of lighting — especially in photography. I chose a darker green because I liked the shade. It often appears a bit bluish in photos. One of the more common comments I get when people see me in person is that I am greener than they expected.

nootrope: Don’t you wish you were a blue lizard, man?

Nope.

Cork: Do you ever hope to authenticate your appearance by going into further details with the scales, making them more realistic, and less of just a simple representation?

Potentially, but I will be happy to get just the basic two tone coverage completed and then work from there.

juniper: What types of foods spark nostalgia for you? Songs? Images? Smells?

I am not a particularly nostalgic person but I know that part of my fondness for soft pretzels comes from pleasant childhood associations — the same for gummi bears and James Bond movies.

Chan: Which modification has been your favorite/most successful, aesthetically and spiritually?

Spiritually? Someone didn’t read my last column. As for the rest? Tongue splitting.

ServMe: Is there a certain lizard characteristic that you have decided not to pursue due to the danger involved, or because you wouldn’t like the outcome? In other words, will you try to reflect a lizard as much as possible, or only use those parts that are of interest to you?

I am only dealing with what interests me. It is a reptilian motif but obviously stylized a great deal.

Mars: Having walked around with you in London, it appears to me that people seem more accepting and less fearful of you than some one with maybe only 25% tattoo coverage and a few facial piercings. Why do you think that is?

It’s all in the presentation. Today it is a bit easier to attribute it to things like recognition but things today aren’t much different than before I became the media whore I am now. I have always said that the key is how you present yourself. Nine times out of ten when people treat you like a jerk it is not because you have modifications, it is because you are acting like jerk — walking around with some chip on your shoulder and not giving them the chance to be decent to you.

Another theory I have is that it is easier for people to look at my project as just that — a project. It has an obvious theme and that reflects a certain amount of consideration. Even though this is the case for many other people, it is not as obvious to the casual observer and so instead of thinking ‘creative person with an overall goal’ they think ‘punk’ or ‘thug’ who doesn’t give a damn.

Goblin: Say you’re given the opportunity to be a guest speaker at an elementary school. Can you sum up what your presentation would cover?

I should probably mention that my Mom is an elementary school teacher and I have friends with kids in this age group, so it isn’t horribly uncommon for me to visit an elementary school. To answer your question, there are lots of subjects I could address, but given free range to choose for myself I would very likely do something along the lines of appreciating differences. I used to teach swimming for three year olds and up, and kid’s classes at my old dojo. I really enjoy working with kids under the right circumstances and have received a good deal of praise for my work.

shawn.spc: I really enjoyed you on X-files. So, here’s my question &mdas Next time you come to Philly, I want you to get naked and run through Chinatown on a rampage, Godzilla style. Will you do it?

This is why I love Shawn — he’s a bastard (I wasn’t on the X-files).

I’ll do it if you run in front of me naked screaming ‘here lizard’ like that Taco Bell dog. Oh yeah, you pay the legal costs too.

saram: What words of advice would you have for someone interested in attempting a full-body transformation through body modification?

Get the rest of your life together first because the transformation will consume you otherwise. Plan, consider, revise, repeat. Find support before you begin. Think twice. Have a life besides the transformation project, in as much as it can take over your life at times the project itself is not a life or a solution.

jasonthe29th: How do you think you would feel mentally if you did not have the modifications you have today and how would your everyday life be different.

I think I would be able to find other ways to channel my ideas and drives since my modifications are not compulsive behaviors themselves but rather expressions of myself… Much like a painter who could no longer paint might turn to sculpting or composing. It is one thing to deny a particular method and another to deny the motivation. Probably the most significant change for me in daily life would be the lack of head turning, staring, and so on. Then again, I might get that anyway for doing something else that was bizarre!

Athena: What is the biggest way your philosophical background affects your outlook on life, both as a modified man and as “just Erik”?

I take philosophy very literally — love of wisdom. Wisdom for me is the practical interpretation and application of knowledge and experience. The experience of life, while an end in and of itself to me, can be further enhanced through the practice of philosophy.

volatile: When will you be done? How will you know?

I don’t know when, but when I am, I will know. I suspect it will be much like knowing when to walk away from a painting or a drawing.

Sparkle And Fade: What did you dress up as for Halloween as a child?

Something different every year. The one that stands out in my memory right now is Q-bert (with a big homemade paper-mache head).

Vanilla: If you weren’t “The Lizardman” what do you believe you would be doing right now (employment and career wise)?

I would probably still be trying to make it as an artist or performer of some sort even without the transformation. If that wasn’t making it, I would likely have gone back to night shifts at a warehouse — that gave me time and resources to do whatever I wanted.

bullgod2481: If you could, would you take anything back/change anything/done anything different?

Nothing significant.

wave: Read any good books lately? What’s on your want-to-read list?

I’m much less of a bookworm than I used to be — much of what I read now is reference or of a much shorter form (magazine articles, online essays, and so on). The books on my ‘to get to’ list are mainly instructional. The last thing I read (re-read actually) for pure pleasure was Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.

lacerazor: What’s your middle name?

Michael.

quinnnchick: Will the Chicago Cubs win the World Series in our lifetime?

I wouldn’t mind seeing baseball abolished, thus negating this question. I don’t like the game.

anokfreak: What are your feelings towards, or opinions about people with very little modifications? For example the average person on the street with an eyebrow, or navel?

I wrote a whole column about them last month. You can’t really judge someone by the amount or type of modification they choose — develop hunches maybe, at best. It takes far more information and interaction for me to hold any real convictions or opinions about them.

Goat: If you were a rich man, would you biddy biddy biddy biddy biddy biddy biddy bum?

Probably not — but then again, maybe once just to see.

RenoSucks: This has nothing to do with the green, the tongue, or anything else really. I’d just like to know if you’re content with your life…maybe even happy?

I’d say I’m happy. And, quite frankly, that is what matters.

Meghan: When did you stop wearing underwear on a regular basis?

Between 1992 and 1993.

Nullius: Have you read the part in Dante’s Inferno (Canto XXV) where people are turned into reptiles and vice versa? When I read it I thought of you.

I’ve read it but more or less forgotten about that part. Just goes to show how classic I am. Heh.

Tammy: How do you feel when you see yourself on television? Do you even bother to watch the shows when they come on?

I generally watch to see how the finished product came out — you really can’t tell at all during the filming. I am hypercritical of myself in such situations and often more pre-occupied with how ‘useful’ I think the piece was than thinking about being on TV as something cool. Any nitwit can get on TV (most do — just watch your local news, RealTV, whatever) but to have it actually mean something in terms of being entertaining or informative is a challenge.

glider (again… heh): Along those lines, how do you feel being presented alongside furries? And how do furries respond to you?

I have no problem being presented alongside them. I just don’t want myself or them misrepresented for our respective ideas and beliefs. Most furries I have met have been very enthusiastic about my work and incredibly nice.

moof: Do you still want to finish your PhD at some point?

Not really. I don’t need or particularly desire someone else to ‘certify’ my work in that way. I’d take an honorary degree (I’ll take pretty much anything free) or I’d at least seriously consider finishing if they waived the costs.

Flat Stanley: Why is your girlfriend so damn cute?

‘Cause I know how to pick’em!

Char the magicalest gnome: Why is my cat looking at me like I’m food?

You are food.

Fidget: At what age do you think it’s appropriate to let kids start major body modifications; the ones that are not easily reversible like standard lobe piercings?

The real answer is that it varies from individual to individual. The socially practical answer is to set an arbitrary age which will be good enough for most. In order to avoid unnecessary hassles, I suggest people wait till at least eighteen but I have met a lot of people who weren’t close to ready in my opinion at thirty and some that were ahead of the game at fourteen.

Anomis: How do you feel about binary gender identification? Do you feel people can be both, none or a third gender?

To me gender is simply a matter of classification for convenience based on genetic make up — XX verus XY (versus XYY, etc). Anything beyond that is relative BS (that’s bullshit, not Bachelor of Science). The identification you are describing, I think, is not identifying with gender but with ascribed gender roles and possibly genital structure. To that I say — act as you want and change around your genitals as much as you like, and science will allow for. People can be whatever they want since it’s people that make up these things in the first place. To indelicately rip off Zen Buddism,

Q: Who makes the grass green?

A: You do.

robert: What inspired you to become what you are today?

Everything I have experienced up to this point. Seriously, I think looking for causation and singular causation in particular is very often a fruitless and often harmful process.

sheduma: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

A woodchuck would chuck all the wood that woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. I love that rhyme.

Also, how can I get my puppy to stop farting at night?

Butt plug? Or maybe a change in diet.

Pabloferreira: So far I’ve only heard about full body transformations similar to yours in the US. I know that there are some individuals who do take their body modifications pretty far in other regions but so far nothing like you or the Enigma. Do you know if there are similar individuals outside North America?

There are people outside of North America doing extreme modifications and extensive transformations. I think the main reason you may not being seeing them is that the US is pretty much the media spotlight of the world. We, collectively, send out our stories all over the world but intake very few others and even then we re-package them as our own. It is just far easier to get high level (world wide) coverage in the States.

eliz: What are your favorite season, favorite food, favorite TV show, favorite movie, and favorite book?

Depends on geography but most places it will be fall, pizza, The Simpsons, it varies with mood, and The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

rwwarren_01: Who is your favorite musician, band, or musical group?

It’s dependent on mood, but I can almost always listen to anything by Rob Zombie, Tori Amos, Depeche Mode, Ministry, or Bach — and The Overture of 1812.




Erik Sprague

because the world NEEDS freaks…

Former doctoral candidate and philosophy degree holder Erik Sprague, the Lizardman (iam), is known around the world for his amazing transformation from man to lizard as well as his modern sideshow performance art. Need I say more?

Copyright © 2003 BMEzine.com LLC. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published August 26th, 2003 by BMEzine.com LLC in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.

Lucifire – Queen of “Grotesque Burlesque” [Guest Column]

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Lucifire
Queen of “Grotesque Burlesque”
by Danielle Clark

"Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form."

– Stephen Nachmanovitch

Sideshows play an important part in body modification culture. They not only give the “common folk” a way to interact with the modified in a positive manner but they also allow people to expand their definition of what a person is and how humans should be able to act. However, they seem to be dominated by males: Tim Cridland (The Torture King), Eric Sprague (The Lizardman), Paul Lawrence (The Enigma), Joseph Hermann (Mr. Lifto), and so on. Today we introduce to you someone you likely haven’t heard of before; a multi-talented sideshow performer, a singer, a fire breathing, scissor masturbating, blood letting, crotch grinding and incredibly captivating female performer — Lucifire.

Working primarily out of the UK, Luci has taken the sideshow world by storm. She offers a fresh look into the darkly entertaining modified stage performer all wrapped up in a stunning package. She offers what can only be described as “Grotesque Burlesque” — a show guaranteed to tantalize.

Danielle/BME: Can you give a little background on you, where you grew up, and your family life?

Lucifire — fire breathing.Lucifire: I grew up in the middle of Scotland, out in the sticks. We moved around a fair bit when I was a kid, we lived in Dundee, then in an artist’s commune in a fishing village on the west coast of Scotland, then a few other places before settling in Carron Valley. It was seven miles to the nearest bus stop and my next-door neighbour on one side was a half a mile away. I guess I had too much time to myself. I didn’t mix much with kids my own age because there weren’t many around. I spent a lot of time in the company of adults and animals. My parents were both very artistic and well educated and encouraged me to be creative and freethinking. I was always the quiet one at the back of the class with my nose buried in a book, a shy retiring wallflower that drew weird pictures and wrote strange stories.

My parents split up when I was five but I’ve always stayed in touch with my dad. I absolutely adore him and respect him as an artist and a human being. I don’t know anyone else with as much integrity. He lives in the Caribbean now with his girlfriend of fifteen years and I love going to see them. He plays music there and helps locals to record their own music.

My mum remarried and her new husband was wonderful too. He treated my half sister (his daughter) and me totally equally and fairly, with a lot of love. I think he wished he had a son though; he bought me my first motorbike when I was twelve and never treated me as a girl. I spent a lot of happy times with him in the garage. Nowadays I spend a lot of happy times with him in the pub.

I see a lot of my sister and although my mum and I don’t see much of each other we get on well. All of my family is very proud of me and support me in what I do.

Danielle/BME: You had an interesting childhood, very open and with great creative influences in your parents and stepparent — in what ways did they help to influence and encourage you to the way you are today and the career path you ultimately chose?

Lucifire: My dad was a community artist, setting up music and arts projects for kids, pensioners, the unemployed and anyone else that was interested. I’ve always been so amazed how my dad seems to know how to build anything. He has a wonderful combination of artistic and mathematical abilities. He bought me a keyboard and a computer when I was very young and taught me a lot about art and science and how they can combine. He showed me how to do graphics on a computer when I was a kid in the early eighties; as well as showing me how to build sculptures and taking me on his band’s gigs. I clearly remember being at gigs and hiding under the piano while he played and dodging his feet as he stomped, keeping time. When I first learned to breathe fire I told him proudly but he said, “Yeah, I used to do that but I can’t anymore because of my beard”. What an anticlimax, I thought he was going to be shocked or amazed. He’s a real big kid at heart. My dad and I both had Mohican haircuts at the same time, and I shaved my head for the first time around at his house with his clippers.

My mother was a photographer that used to dress me up in silly outfits and take pictures. She helped me make lots of amazing fancy dress costumes. Also, because we lived in isolation she would stay up until the middle of the night talking to me about art, politics and humanity.

My step-dad is how I described above.

However, both my parents being artists, they encouraged me not to go into the arts professionally. They could see I had an aptitude for science and encouraged that instead. They wanted me to get a stable career and not have to struggle the way they did. When I finally changed direction and they could see my mind was made up they were totally supportive.

Danielle/BME: It seems that most sideshow performers are well-educated and often quite worldly and willing to experiment and explore different venues. What education have you undertaken and in what areas?

Lucifire: I was always top of my class in school, to such an extent that I was always the unpopular “geek” or brainy swot. I didn’t really study much and even deliberately did worse in some tests in an attempt to make more friends. I wanted to study veterinary medicine so I studied sciences, math, English and Latin at school and upon passing with flying colours was accepted on to a vet med course on condition that I take a year out first (as they thought I was too young).

During my year out I started studying art and dance and was smitten. However I also left home and needed a job so I used my science background to get a chemistry job where I was sent on day release to study a national certificate in chemistry. I left that job when I was accepted to do a foundation dance course in Dundee. After that I had to leave Scotland to pursue dance training at the best institute the UK had to offer (in my opinion at the time) completing a contemporary dance degree at London Contemporary Dance School. Since then I’ve done several bits n’ pieces, including a B-Tec in fireworks and one in pyrotechnics. Oh, and I am a First Aid Medic and qualified Padi Rescue Diver.

Danielle/BME: You are truly well educated for the field you’ve finally chosen. What did you do career-wise before starting to perform?

Lucifire: Well, there was the previously mentioned flirtation with role of research chemist, working for United Distillers. I got to spend every day tinkering with vials of alcohol wearing a white lab coat with my thigh length stiletto boots peeking out the bottom. Hell, I was still a teenager and it made the day more exciting. Before that I even did a YTS (remember them?) at the local museum for a couple of months. I worked in a shop in Camden lacing customers into corsets while I was a student and busked breathing fire on the streets of London.

Danielle/BME: You have had quite a varied work history; though all with an underlying theme it seems. Is there something that people are generally surprised to hear that you have done in your past for instance that you had worked as a research chemist for a time to help fund your way through dance school?

Lucifire: The research chemist is always a bit surprising, but even more surprising I think is that I presented a GSCE chemistry programme for schools. They wanted a presenter that could breathe fire (the programmes were about elements and the periodic table) and when they realised I knew my shit they hired me instantly. Was kinda fun, mostly because I get to think about these teenage kids watching me on the TV at school talking about the periodic table and wondering if they can tell about my secret evil double life. In reality, kid’s TV presenting is probably more of a secret double life than my “normal” one which I hide from no one.

Danielle/BME: You’ve since branched out of “normal” careers and settled into being a sideshow performer and general stage artist. Some of the work you do on stage with your “Grotesque Burlesque” features involves body modification. What was your first exposure to body modification in the personal and entertainment sense?

Lucifire: Well that depends on what you count as body modification. I insisted that I get my ears pierced when I was five. My mum had a total of about nine piercings in her ears and I wanted some. After a nose piercing and countless ear piercings my first proper piercing was a tongue piercing about ten years ago, after I saw a friend’s tongue piercing. I’d never even heard of it before. After that I was hooked. As far as entertainment goes, I think the first body mod show I saw was Genitorturers at torture garden, probably about the same time. I’m not even sure how long I’ve been using piercing etc in my own shows, several years at least.

Danielle/BME: What body modifications do you currently have?

Lucifire: Stock take: piercings: three in my left ear, five in my right ear, one in my nose, a top lip frenulum thingy (which has been there for at least six years by the way), a 4ga tongue bar, a left nipple piercing and two in my right, a navel piercing, two clit hood piercings and one in the clit itself (I’ve have had several more done but taken out for aesthetic or practical reasons).

I have a scarification of my Lucifire logo on my pubic area — done a few times but I don’t keloid as well as I’d like. That was done by Dave at Tusk Tattoo. He is a very talented artist and a wonderful person. I have countless work or fun related burns and scars.

I have no ink! I have had an inkless tattoo done by Katzen the Tiger Lady on a day off on tour but it has disappeared now… lasted a good few months though. I have a drawing of a beautiful octopus tattoo that I’m going to have done very soon…inkless again, done by Dave from Tusk (again). Ink is just not my thing but I quite enjoyed the feeling and the ritual of being tattooed.

Compared to a lot of my friends and colleagues I really am quite mod-free.

Danielle/BME: Though I’m sure it has been a long time, do you recall what your first exposure to performance art, in a similar fashion to what you do, was?

Lucifire: I saw a lot of weird theatre performance stuff when I was studying dance but the first full on performance art piece I really remember seeing was a show by Franko B (see our previous column) about eight years ago in London, in a little space upstairs on Tottenham court road. I remember thinking it was an amazing idea but too slow paced for my own taste. I love Franko’s stuff though but I always want to speed him up. What really got to me was seeing someone bleed slowly in front of me. Blood represents life force to me; it is quite intense to see someone’s life leaking away into a puddle on the floor.

Danielle/BME: That is quite a powerful image. You use a lot of blood in your own acts; I can definitely see the parallel. What made you want to meld the two (body modification and performance art) for your personal acts?

Lucifire: I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I’m not afraid of blood and I love its symbolism. I love making shows, especially shows that affect people deeply and strongly. There’s no better praise than a few fainters or vomiters, which means that the combination of reality overload and theatrical elaboration has done its job. I love the adrenaline of performance — couple that with doing scary stuff on stage and you get a double hit… yee-ha!

Danielle/BME: You regularly engage in acts such as play piercing, bloodletting, and the like on stage — do you also enjoy these activities privately or are they only for the show?

Lucifire: I do these things on stage because I have a fascination for them. Blood is a powerful symbol and I like to use it on stage and although I’ve done a fair bit in my personal life, I’m such an exhibitionist that it seems a shame to not share it with an audience. My first suspension was done privately but I did my first public one recently.

Danielle/BME: While doing these more extreme acts such as play piercing, masturbation with scissors, bloodletting, and general blood play are you ever concerned about cross contamination?

Lucifire: I’m absolutely terrified of cross contamination. I always go to extreme lengths to ensure that any real blood used in a show is carefully contained and that no cross contamination occurs. This is especially hard when you have to make it not dictate or spoil the form of a show or it’s narrative. The end result makes it worthwhile though.

All equipment is sterile and we always perform completely sober and straight. The lunacy you see on stage is all natural. Despite all that I still get myself tested regularly. You can’t be too careful. The bugger is that I can’t give blood anymore; they won’t take your blood if you’ve been pierced within the past six months, and I really have no problem with giving some away. Actually I thought about becoming a phlebotomist (person that takes blood) myself, to hone my blood taking skills.

 

Masturbating with Scissors and Blootletting

 

Danielle/BME: You have a world of experience in so many different areas. You are not just a stage performer but also an artist as well. You are in a band, you do photography, and you are naturally a model for your own website and your new project Scarlet Mews. Regarding art and art forms, you recently asked at your online journal, “What is the difference between art, erotica and pornography?” How do you yourself define the differences?

Lucifire: Well, that’s a big ole can of worms. Although there are legal definitions, generally I think it’s quite subjective. British law defines pornography as an erect penis or open vulva. Generally I’d agree with that. I think it also mentions something about “designed specifically to cause sexual arousal”. If there’s more than just that intention then it’s possibly crossing into erotica or art.

For myself I see pornography as being quite obvious, direct and often not very beautiful. My idea of erotica is something less direct where suggestion and sensuality and beauty are the overriding concerns. I would see art as being more concerned with the message or medium rather than arousal. It’s all very muddy and one person’s art may be someone else’s pornography. I think erotica lies somewhere in the middle. I would be happy to show and discuss art or erotica with my parents; I would feel uncomfortable doing the same with pornography.

Danielle/BME: Your current look could be described as both artistic and erotic. You used to have quite a different look from what you have now. What triggered the dramatic transformation to über-femme and how has it changed how your audiences receive you?

Lucifire: I didn’t see my transformation as all that dramatic, it happened over a period of time. When I was younger I was a raging killer feminist. I had a lot to prove about female strength, independence and ability. Tank Girl was my teen idol, along with Ripley from Alien.

Over the years I would sometimes get into fancy dress as a “girl” just for a laugh. I did it more and more and got to like it. I was also getting quite heavily into the swing scene and loved the fashion. I had less to prove about my own strength and found it was even more subversive to look like an “über-femme” but do really hardcore things. It messes with people’s heads but is also more accessible.Luci

“Straight” audiences will accept you easier if you look sweet n’ pretty but they find it harder to reconcile what you look like with what you do. It’s easy to understand and dismiss a butch girl doing butch or scary stuff; I love confusing them and breaking their preconceptions. If I can make someone question their stereotypes I’ve done a great job.

I looked like a baby Tank Girl for years and years. I had a shaved head with 2 little red horns, wore ripped tight shorts n’ braces, little bra tops and big bike boots. Most of my clothes came from army surplus stores.

Nowadays most of my clothing comes from vintage shops or I make myself from vintage patterns. I have shoulder length hair that is usually set in 40′s styles with rollers. I find it highly amusing that I am so granny-like, stocking up on setting lotion and gin. My hair is still bright fire red though and I still have my piercings. I am not trying to step back in time, just drag the 40′s and 50′s kicking and screaming into my world.

Danielle/BME: You seem to incorporate an element of sexuality into all facets of your art, from your onstage performances to the photographic sessions you in which you are the subject. Why is this?

Lucifire: I am fascinated by sexuality, gender, and what is deemed acceptable or arousing. I admit I’ve traded heavily on sex in my career for a couple of reasons; I am a very sexual person and can’t think of a more exciting and universal subject matter — it is easier to get into people’s heads and have them accept what you are doing if they find you sexually attractive. It messes with their heads when you are both sexy and repulsive at the same time, hence my term “Grotesque Burlesque”.

Sex is a great leveler in life. Almost everyone wants it, although I’ve discovered not many people are obsessed with it as I am. It’s been a big problem in my love life, finding someone or some two/three with an appetite to match mine.

Danielle/BME: Scarlet Mews is a new project of yours. What influenced you to get into producing erotica for the sake of art and erotica (as opposed to being erotic in your performance)?

Lucifire: I think this is just my most recent exploration into sexuality. I’ve reached a point where I feel comfortable in accepting my obsession with sex and have found a way to not only make it a business, but a business that allows me to flex a lot of creative muscles at the same time. Scarlet Mews will not just be a bunch of dirty pictures, but artfully and cleverly designed photo and video shoots as well as short stories and poetry. It encompasses all the arts (except music, at this stage I’ll save that for my band). I’m always looking for new projects; this is my current one.

Danielle/BME: I’m looking forward to seeing it advance. From the photos that are there of you, and those at your personal site one can easily see that you are in phenomenal physical shape; naturally this is necessary for your work. Do you do any special training to stay in top condition?

Lucifire: I go through phases of exercising. I trained as a dancer full time for several years so that got me into good shape then, the constant lugging of heavy cases and bags of kit (steel plates and power tools are pretty heavy you know), over the years I’ve done kickboxing, capoiera, yoga and lots of gym training, even the odd ballet class just to keep myself on top of things. At the moment pretty much all my training is sexcercise, there just aren’t enough hours in the day!

Danielle/BME: I hear that in itself can be phenomenal exercise. I can imagine that some of your stage work requires you to have a calm and clear mind. Do you engage in any form of meditation or centering activities to help you to focus better both in your personal life and in your performances?

Lucifire: The nearest I get to meditation is writing lists, I do that almost religiously and it makes me feel relaxed and that everything is under control.

Danielle/BME: I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who does that. It definitely helps to ease one’s worries. You’ve done a variety of different acts both on and off the stage; what’s the scariest thing you have done during a performance?

Lucifire: Every new show is terrifying, especially when there are other people in the show and we need to co-ordinate. Every time I try a stunt for the first time it’s scary but that usually passes quickly. Singing on stage the first few times was probably more terrifying for me than any stunt. The thing that still scares me is sticking a needle into my vein in my arm and draining it. It’s the psychological thing of messing with veins that’s scary, I’ve had a bad haematoma from it before and it scared me, thinking I was going to get collapsed veins or something. Stupid I know, junkies do it all the time and they’re not always in top mental form. I think it’s a mental barrier.

Another scary thing is when you come off stage and you have no idea what you just did because you were so transported by the moment, sometimes I can hardly even speak. This is particularly scary when you have injuries and you don’t know how or when. These are special occasions and I treasure them — these are the shows that keep me going, the reason I started and the reason I continue.

Danielle/BME: You must have quite a few stories to tell.

Lucifire: I remember one time being on tour with Killing Joke and suddenly being aware of where I was and what I was doing. I was at an outdoor rock festival in Belgium I think, the sun was shining and it was nearing the end of their set and I’d climbed up the lighting truss at the side of the stage with a mouthful of fuel and a lit torch, I was painted bright blue and wearing just a small loincloth, thirty feet up in the air hanging upside down from just the back of one knee, breathing fire. I was suddenly shocked by the fact I was there and how stupidly dangerous it was… for so many reasons. I loved that tour.

Danielle/BME: That sounds amazing. Though not quite exactly the same there are other artists who do similar work; Steve-O (see our interview with Steve-O from earlier this year), Eric Sprague (The Lizardman), and Tim Cridland (The Torture King) being just a few of those. Are you familiar with them and what do you think of the work that they do?

Lucifire: I’ve never seen any of the above mentioned live but I’ve seen them all on TV and met Lizardman briefly and Tim. I think Tim does amazing stunts. His Sufi training and his dedication has enabled him to do the most incredible piercing shows… not just piercing the skin but right through the middle of limbs.

Danielle/BME: It’s amazing stuff. Considering all you’ve seen and done thus far is there much that you are still curious about that you have seen and want to try?

Lucifire: Bungee jumping, parachuting, having kids, running my new website, bigger shows… everything I haven’t done yet.

Danielle/BME: What performances have you seen that you admire, but that you yourself would be hesitant to do?

Lucifire: Sword swallowing (I tried but didn’t like it, too much gagging), contortion such as Daniel Browning Smith (the Rubber Boy — because he’s an amazing performer, but also I just couldn’t ever physically do what he does), Tom Comet’s shows where he catches a bowling ball on his face, balances a running lawnmower on his upper lip and juggles chainsaws. Tim Cridland’s piercing shows.

Danielle/BME: At the time I sent this interview to you, you hadn’t yet experienced flesh-hook suspension. Now that you have what do you think about it and how has it changed you?

Lucifire: I did a suspension on a day off during the first “modern primitives” tour. John Kamikaze was doing a two-hook suspension every night in the show and was joking around with some of the other guys about them doing it. I wasn’t going to let an opportunity like that go by so I got him to string me up on a day off. It was just for fun, only a couple of friends were there and I used eight hooks instead of two, since I was just a beginner. I stayed up for about half an hour and it was a really amazing experience, feeling the waves of pain wash over me. It doesn’t so much hurt, as throb and pulse in waves. Hard to describe and very intense, not something I’d want to do everyday but I knew I’d definitely do it again.

Danielle/BME: That sounds familiar, most people who do suspensions can’t quite describe the sensations afterwards but they pretty much always want to give it another go. You did another suspension recently — however this time you decided to do it publicly. How was that for you?

Suspension.Lucifire: The one I did recently was at the Metal Hammer Awards where I did an upright suspension from six-hooks, once more by Dave Tusk (can you guess yet?). It was all over a bit too quick — I didn’t want to come down. I did a “strung-up pin-up”. I was dressed in a sumptuous sequined burlesque outfit, dripping in diamantes, corseted and wearing glittering high heels. The suspension rig was decked out in white flowers and as the hooks were put in I posed sweetly and sang “I’ve got you under my skin”. The problem I have with a lot of “body art” acts, is that they take too long and lose their impact on the crowd and become self indulgent. It’s hard to find a way of presenting it quickly and powerfully. Allen Falkner of TSD is a master of that but his style is his own and would not work for me so I’m trying to develop this new strung up pin up style.

Danielle/BME: That sounds amazing — you can definitely put on an eye-catching show. Considering some of the other acts you do on stage I can’t see a flesh suspension as being your most “out there” and controversial act, however Miss Bathory, Rosemary’s Baby, and the Siamese Twins definitely come to mind. What would you consider your most controversial act?

Lucifire: I don’t consider anything I do as being very “out there”, every thing has come into existence through an organic process; it all makes perfect sense to me because I know the background.

Miss Bathory was very disturbing for the audience though. Xena’s (The Warrior Princess) stuntwoman was in the front row and passed out in the first five-minutes — that was a real compliment. A lot of our friends were so disturbed by it they had to leave halfway, and others wanted to “rescue” us. I think that was because, as well as all the blood play, the Floating in a tank of blood.characters were all very disturbed women.

Rosemary’s baby was just a tribute to a film, although quite a gory and fun one.

As for the Siamese twins, I adore them. I love the characters and I love the show. Whenever I see them on video I still laugh out loud. That’s quite something when you created them and know them inside out. The show is so funny that it doesn’t seem harmful to me at all. Although I am not a “born freak” I feel the show was made very sympathetically, and I’ve worked in the Freakshow business for long enough to respect others’ conditions. It was not only a show about freaks and how we perceive them, but a metaphor for living with an incompatible other half, whether that is a sibling, lover, or your own darker side. That’s if you can be bothered to think about it, otherwise it’s just a grotesque comedy.

Then again, masturbating a girl with a pair of scissors on stage until her eyes bleed I guess could be seen as a little “out there”!

Danielle/BME: I could definitely see that as being considered a little bizarre. With all of these acts you play with the very real risk of extreme physical deformity, injury, and death. I assume that you are relatively at peace with the idea of death. Despite that, you must have some tangible fears?

Lucifire: Regrets, finding out that I missed out on something, being old and wishing I had the courage to follow my dreams.

Danielle/BME: I think many people share those fears. Despite how they may look, your performances aren’t about causing you pain — how would you define the acts that you do and why you do them?

Lucifire: I do what I do to entertain and to ask questions. I don’t have all the answers. That’s why I ask them. I want to show people new things and new ways of thinking; I want to point out the wonder of the human body and what it can do, and of course because it gives me a buzz.

Danielle/BME: If you can’t enjoy it there’s no point in doing it. When your performance time is up, do you have a retirement plan or another career you will pursue?

Lucifire: I’ll think of something, and it will be the right thing because it will result out of who I have become. I will not be the same person in ten years time, so how can I decide what that person will do?

Danielle/BME: That’s a good point. I’m sure twenty years ago you didn’t see yourself where you are now. Eventually, as morbid as this is, you will die — do you have any special requests for when that happens?

Lucifire: When I die I want to be cremated and have my ashes put into a firework so I can be exploded over the sky. I think that would be very in keeping with my life and everyone close to me adores fireworks and explosives, I think it would be a fitting end.

Danielle/BME: What do you want people to say about you when you die?

Lucifire: That I had a good life and I was a good person.

Danielle/BME: I can’t see them saying otherwise. You have been great to get to know and I definitely wish you the best in your future endeavors. Thank you so much for taking the time to complete this interview with me. For the reading audience as a recap, what types of events do you entertain at and how can an interested person book you for an event or get ahold of you?

Lucifire: I do a lot of shows at fetish events, gay clubs, artsy or alternative cabarets, tattoo conventions and private parties. Anyone interested in booking me can contact me at [email protected].

Lucifire.com

Note that Lucifire does not limit herself to the UK or Scotland, she has performed all around the world. Find out more about her at her personal website Lucifire.com, her online livejournal, or her newest site Scarlet Mews.


Luci was interviewed by Danielle Clark (iam:Vanilla) through a series of e-mail correspondence. All photos are copyright protected and owned by Lucifire.

Copyright © 2003 Danielle Clark and BMEzine.com LLC. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online August 20th, 2003 by BMEzine.com LLC in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.

Contemporary Blood Letting

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As part of an ongoing investigation into private rituals and public spaces, this article will consider the growing interest in Live Art in which the artists use their own bodies as the site of inquiry. Social taboos such as bloodletting, self-flagellation and body modification will be considered, alongside the objections to this particular practice.Live Art has its history in the performance art practice of the 1970′s. Informed by the work of such artists as the Viennese Aktionists, Coum Transmissions and Chris Burden, the artists who engage in this particular practice choose to use their own bodies, pushing the boundaries of social taboo. Creating more of an interrogation than a dialogue, the spectator is forced into making choices about questions of identity and difference and the nature of mortality.

In order to negotiate these particular practices has proved problematic, as the performances now only exist in a fragmentary way within photographs and videos. Of course, this documentation is not the performance itself. A photograph or video is a snapshot of time and cannot be totally representative. In an age of mass information overload, where we have become de-conditioned to atrocities committed in the name of politics, global terrorism and famine, the ‘news’ documentation played back on radio and television does not tell the real story. We are conditioned to objectify violations of the body and remove ourselves from immersion in such actions and feelings. The curators (journalists and TV news presenters) of this spectacle manipulate our points of view, numbing us to the reality of events happening in distant countries to ‘the other’.

The use of blood within Live Art forces the viewer into re-considering their own bodily vulnerability and to question issues of gender roles. As Live Artists use their own bodies as a site for inquiry, there is an immediacy of similarity between the viewers and viewed, which does not require any academic training to understand. As such, immediate actions onto the body have generated a discourse that reaches beyond the confines of the Fine Art arena. Press interest has created a reputation for these artists that places them as ‘the other’ onto which we can project our own fears about bodily invasion and destruction, where we can directly experience such violent actions by attending a performance, not constructed and removed from reality in the manner television forces us to.

Artists such as Franko B and Ron Athey provoke such a discourse, but one that is fuelled by reputation rather than experience. A sense of control, which could easily lapse into chaos, is the constant concern of such direct actions onto the body. With the disneyfication of difference so prevalent within Western culture, these artists are seeking to re-address the balance and re-affirm their own identities, using taboos such as blood, nakedness and socially sanctioned ‘self-harm’ to explore their own bodies. Traditional Fine Art notions of ‘the space’ and ‘the body’ become ‘this space’ and ‘this body’.

 

Ron Athey’s practice is informed by his years of heroin addiction, a fundamentalist pentecostal upbringing, his mother being an institutionalised schizophrenic and ultimately his diagnosis of HIV fifteen years ago. His performances seek to negotiate his relationship to these events, creating a theatre of spectacle in which the viewer is implicated. His use of religious tableau to address these issues further enhances notions of social taboo and stigma. Disussing the idea of theatre and performance as cathartic methods of expression, Athey states,

 

"Like the plague, the theatre is the time of evil, the triumph of dark powers that are nourished by a power even more profound until extinction...The theatre like the plague, is in the image of this carnage and this essential separation. It releases conflicts, disengages powers, liberates possibilities, and if these possibilities and these powers are dark, it is the fault not of the plague nor of the theatre, but of life".

(Exposures, 2002, pg 6)

In “Four Scenes from a Harsh Life” he inserts 30 hypodermic needles into his arm, referencing his time as an intravenous drug user. He then, with the help of his ‘medical’ staff, inserts a crown of ‘thorns’ (hypodermic needles again), enacting Christ’s death. As he collapses on the floor, his assistants cover him with a white shroud and he is carried to the centre of the stage. After a short while he is cleansed with water and is ‘resurrected’.

During “Nurses’ Penance,” he re-creates the institutional terror of a hospital setting, with a patient brutalized by huge drag-queen nurses with sewn-together lips. In another piece he’s writhing naked, on one end of a double-headed dildo. His richest source for material, though, is the church. Most of his pieces have religious names like ‘Martyrs and Saints’ and ‘Deliverance’, along with characters like St. Sebastian, who’s martyred with a literal crown of thorns that causes blood to rain onto his face and the floor. Much of his work is driven by a sense of martyrdom and, arguably, a self-hate instilled on him from childhood.

Athey attracted international attention in 1994, after a Minneapolis performance in which he sliced into the back of a fellow performance artist, placed strips of paper towel over the wounds and then hoisted the bloodied strips of paper towel, via pulley, over the heads of the audience. Though no blood dripped down onto the audience, and though the performer who was cut was HIV negative, Athey’s own HIV positive status led one audience member to claim that the crowd had been spattered with HIV-positive blood.

Within these performances, the spectator is forced into a position of passive voyeurism. The audience act as conduits for this dialogue that is critical to Athey’s performances. Whilst Athey maintains the power, the audience are left helpless as he metamorphoses himself, through methods of live body modification. Although Athey presents himself to us as an artist, he is also allowing us to observe a process of healing and catharsis. Though Athey does not use documentation in a way that is representative (ie he doesn’t exhibit this work in a gallery), videos of his work provide us with a snapshot of the experience of his performances. His use of theatre to present the ‘real’, adds further signifiers to his work. Referencing notions of catholic ritual and linking this to the idea of Christ as drug taker (although by inference) he opens up a discourse on the nature of religion and its use of ritual.

The use of blood in Franko B’s performances operates as a different signifier. Franko B is not HIV+ and he uses blood as an affirmation of life. His short pieces involve cutting, scarification and other apparent S/M practices. The direct use of his body in these performances removes any notions of ‘representation’. In order to fully experience Franko B, one has to be present as part of a complete visual, physical and emotional immersion in the work.

His performances such as ‘I Miss You’, when he walks down a canvas in a room set up like a fashion show, with photographers situated at one end, to heighten the sense of voyeurism, seek to implicate the viewer further. ‘Oh Lover Boy’ sites Franko as an ‘artists model’. To quote from Gray Watsons interview with Franko B,

 

"Oh Lover Boy is going to be a performance piece where again, the body is presented: it's there on the table. It is there for you to take, in a way, either to draw or to look at...the set-up is going to be almost like a life-drawing class but there is also a clinical side, where it is like you are looking at a body. But it is not passive; it is not a dead body, in a way it's giving life by bleeding. And he's looking at you".

(Gray Watson, 2000)

Franko’s performances reference his childhood being brought up by the Red Cross. Using a diatribe of medical equipment such a syringes, drip stands and wheel chairs, Franko re-enforces notions of healing, but also control, amidst the perceived chaos of his performances. He can only perform three times a year because of the amount of healing that needs to take place after his performances.

Franko’s other work, (which is regularly exhibited, unlike Ron Athey’s documentation) consists of collages and installations. His collage work, references his ‘real’ experiences, and documents his whole life. This again raises issues of vulnerability, as he is leaving nothing to the imagination. Flyers from his performances and pictures of ‘boys I went out with’ (Gray Watson, 2000) mingle with images of religious artefacts and blood stained sheets from his performances.

Issues of power arise here, as the viewer is implicated in the performance by default. Franko appears as helpless and vulnerable, but also has power over his audience. If Franko performed in the street, the context would be different and issues of legality would be raised. This issue of contextualisation also raises issues of safety and notions of control and chaos.

Both Ron Athey and Franko B have ‘medical’ helpers during their performances. They act as signifiers within the performance, to connote to the viewer notions of control and safety. This safety angle is always printed on the flyers, to reassure the viewer. There is a paradox here, as the people that are supposed to ‘help’ during Franko B’s performance, also cut him with a razor during ‘Oh Lover Boy’. The medical helpers are in fact trained body-piercers, with basic anatomy training. As soon as this fact has been established during the performance, these signifiers change.

Both Athey and Franko B as gay men question the nature of masculinity. At their performances, it is the men who recoil against the walls of the venue, normally in foetal positions, returning to maternal signifiers as if about to be castrated. The spilling of blood, whatever the connotation intended by the artist, has the effect of rendering the audience impotent, either to their own bodies or to the performance itself. They cannot help the performers, even though they feel their natural reaction is to do so.

There is also a sense that the performers are acting ‘privately’ and the viewer is intruding into a sacred shamanic ritual. Shamanism is normally associated with women, blood letting during menstruation being an important part of ‘walking with the spirits’. Although, shamans tend to operate outside the confines of accepted social practice, they act as a conduit to ‘other-worldly’ access and are relied upon by the rest of the tribe to maintain a sense of unity. Within the framework of Live Art, the performers provide this access so that the viewers themselves can reach the dark underworld of the shaman. Within Western culture, it appears that men are not supposed to reveal their feelings, let alone share any intimate details about themselves with the outside world. By the direct action onto their bodies and the use of blood, Franko and Athey challenge this notion.

The letting of blood is seen as ‘unclean’. This mythology probably originated in the Old Testament where it is seen that,

 

"She is to be 'put apart for her uncleanness' for seven days".

(Lev. 18:19)

"Any man who lies with her during this time is also unclean for seven days, anyone who touches her is unclean till the evening, and everything that she sitteth upon shall be unclean".

(Lev. 15:19-24)

Throughout the history of art we have encountered images of blood from the earliest cave paintings through centuries of biblical images and through to war films such as Apocalypse Now. It both fascinates us and repulses us. It has come to represent both the sacred and profane. Live Artists use this dichotomy as a way of personal transformation. At the performances there is a sense of sacredness that transcends orthodox religious methods. This could explain why the Christian Church is opposed to such direct actions onto the body. It appals them that something non-religious can actually achieve the same transcendental experience that religion is supposed to offer. In Judaeo-Christian cultures, blood ‘sacrifice’ cannot be culturally sanctioned because of notions of idolatry, where the artist are using their own bodies to ‘redeem’ themselves as opposed to appeals to God.

In his book ‘Violence and the Sacred’, Rene Girards’ theory of sacrifice states,

"The physical metamorphoses of spilt blood can stand for the double nature of violence...Blood serves to illustrate that the same substance can stain or cleanse, contaminate or purify, drive men to fury and murder or appease their anger and restore them to life"

(Girard, 1972)

The process of purification that the artists are trying to achieve can sometimes fail, not providing the audience with the signifier of life that blood performances seek to inform the viewer about. The aforementioned performance by Ron Athey called ‘Martyrs and Saints’ which used supposed HIV blood being heaved across the heads of the audience on a pulley system created an outcry. This could be because the blood was seen as ‘polluted’, making the ‘artist an unacceptable surrogate sacrificial victim for a healthy community’ (Dawn Perlmutter, 2000). In a sense, the signifier contained within the blood changed its meaning and the ritual which was meant to be a demonstration of transcendence through bodily mutilation failed. The distance between the observer and observed was very wide and the artists role as shaman became disjointed, hence the public outcry. The success of such actions is dependent on the audience feeling close to the Live Artists performance.

 

The antagonism towards Live Art does not detract from the fact that Live Art is a growing method of expression. It could be seen as an attempt to disrupt societal and personal boundaries through methods of physical sacrifice and as a process of purification. Although sometimes the ritual, as in Athey’s case, can fail, it is still a ritual which people observe. With the growth of interest in body piercing and tattooing due largely to information being disseminated via the internet, what was once the reserve of underground S/M clubs has now become an overground method of artistic practice. There is an obvious need for people to get back in touch with their own bodies as the site of inquiry, as is evidenced by the recent series of events at the Tate Modern, running over the course of a weekend at the end of March this year called ‘Live Culture’. This exhibition brought together Live Artists from various schools, to inform, perform and debate. Depending on audience interest, the movement will continue to undermine social convention and will move away from the purely aesthetic and personal transformation on the part of the artists, into the realms of communal transformation.

Jason Oliver
May 2003

References

Bibliography

  • Danto, Arthur C (1986). The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. Columbia University Press: New York.
  • Eliade, M (1987). The Encyclopedia of Religion. Macmillan Publishing Co: New York.
  • Stuart, H (1997). Representation, Cultural Represenations and Signifying Practices. Bath Press Colourbooks: Glasgow.
  • Keidan, L, Morgan, S and Sinclair, S. (1998). Franko B. Black Dog Publishing: London.
  • V, Manuel, Watson, G and Wilson, S. (2001). Franko B – Oh Lover Boy. Black Dog Publishing: London.
  • V,Vale and Juno, A. (1989). Modern Primitives, An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual: Re/Search Publications: San Francisco, CA.
  • Wollheim, R. (1980). Art And Its Objects. University Press: Cambridge.

As part of his thesis on the ‘Body as Transformative Object’ Jason is looking for people involved with the body modification community who class themselves as artists. These can be either people who modify others, or who are modified themselves, surgically or otherwise, performers, suspension crews, or any others who see what they do as an art form. I am particularly interested in people that push boundaries that little bit further.

I am looking for people who are willing to take an email-based interview on their motivations, their experiences and why they see their modifications as an art form.

The thesis will be written over the period September-December of this year. All artists interviewed will be fully credited and a copy of the thesis will be given to all those taking part. Contact coldcell for further details.

coldcell-biopicJason Oliver is currently working on his BA (Hons) Graphic Fine Art course in London, UK. His main areas of concern are ritual, body modification, and performances linking the two. He is researching social taboos and the general public’s response to direct actions onto the body and has a special interest in the use of blood, both in art and in ‘tribal’ rituals and how it acts as different signifiers depending on cultural context.

He is an active opponent to cultural appropriation of body ritual, finding it both undermining and patronising but instead explores the role that modification plays to himself personally, without cultural references, by pushing his body into new areas of experience, with documentation being a pre-requisite.

This article was written as a precursor to his thesis, currently entitled ‘The Body as Transformative Object’. You can find Jason on IAM as coldcell.

Copyright © 2003 Jason Oliver and BMEZINE.COM. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online August 20th, 2003 by BMEZINE.COM in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.

Contemporary Blood Letting [Guest Column]

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Contemporary Blood Letting
by Jason Oliver

As part of an ongoing investigation into private rituals and public spaces, this article will consider the growing interest in Live Art in which the artists use their own bodies as the site of inquiry. Social taboos such as bloodletting, self-flagellation and body modification will be considered, alongside the objections to this particular practice.

Live Art has its history in the performance art practice of the 1970′s. Informed by the work of such artists as the Viennese Aktionists, Coum Transmissions and Chris Burden, the artists who engage in this particular practice choose to use their own bodies, pushing the boundaries of social taboo. Creating more of an interrogation than a dialogue, the spectator is forced into making choices about questions of identity and difference and the nature of mortality.

In order to negotiate these particular practices has proved problematic, as the performances now only exist in a fragmentary way within photographs and videos. Of course, this documentation is not the performance itself. A photograph or video is a snapshot of time and cannot be totally representative. In an age of mass information overload, where we have become de-conditioned to atrocities committed in the name of politics, global terrorism and famine, the ‘news’ documentation played back on radio and television does not tell the real story. We are conditioned to objectify violations of the body and remove ourselves from immersion in such actions and feelings. The curators (journalists and TV news presenters) of this spectacle manipulate our points of view, numbing us to the reality of events happening in distant countries to ‘the other’.

The use of blood within Live Art forces the viewer into re-considering their own bodily vulnerability and to question issues of gender roles. As Live Artists use their own bodies as a site for inquiry, there is an immediacy of similarity between the viewers and viewed, which does not require any academic training to understand. As such, immediate actions onto the body have generated a discourse that reaches beyond the confines of the Fine Art arena. Press interest has created a reputation for these artists that places them as ‘the other’ onto which we can project our own fears about bodily invasion and destruction, where we can directly experience such violent actions by attending a performance, not constructed and removed from reality in the manner television forces us to.

Artists such as Franko B and Ron Athey provoke such a discourse, but one that is fuelled by reputation rather than experience. A sense of control, which could easily lapse into chaos, is the constant concern of such direct actions onto the body. With the disneyfication of difference so prevalent within Western culture, these artists are seeking to re-address the balance and re-affirm their own identities, using taboos such as blood, nakedness and socially sanctioned ‘self-harm’ to explore their own bodies. Traditional Fine Art notions of ‘the space’ and ‘the body’ become ‘this space’ and ‘this body’.


Ron Athey’s practice is informed by his years of heroin addiction, a fundamentalist pentecostal upbringing, his mother being an institutionalised schizophrenic and ultimately his diagnosis of HIV fifteen years ago. His performances seek to negotiate his relationship to these events, creating a theatre of spectacle in which the viewer is implicated. His use of religious tableau to address these issues further enhances notions of social taboo and stigma. Disussing the idea of theatre and performance as cathartic methods of expression, Athey states,


"Like the plague, the theatre is the time of evil, the triumph of dark powers that are nourished by a power even more profound until extinction...The theatre like the plague, is in the image of this carnage and this essential separation. It releases conflicts, disengages powers, liberates possibilities, and if these possibilities and these powers are dark, it is the fault not of the plague nor of the theatre, but of life".

(Exposures, 2002, pg 6)

In “Four Scenes from a Harsh Life” he inserts 30 hypodermic needles into his arm, referencing his time as an intravenous drug user. He then, with the help of his ‘medical’ staff, inserts a crown of ‘thorns’ (hypodermic needles again), enacting Christ’s death. As he collapses on the floor, his assistants cover him with a white shroud and he is carried to the centre of the stage. After a short while he is cleansed with water and is ‘resurrected’.

During “Nurses’ Penance,” he re-creates the institutional terror of a hospital setting, with a patient brutalized by huge drag-queen nurses with sewn-together lips. In another piece he’s writhing naked, on one end of a double-headed dildo. His richest source for material, though, is the church. Most of his pieces have religious names like ‘Martyrs and Saints’ and ‘Deliverance’, along with characters like St. Sebastian, who’s martyred with a literal crown of thorns that causes blood to rain onto his face and the floor. Much of his work is driven by a sense of martyrdom and, arguably, a self-hate instilled on him from childhood.

Athey attracted international attention in 1994, after a Minneapolis performance in which he sliced into the back of a fellow performance artist, placed strips of paper towel over the wounds and then hoisted the bloodied strips of paper towel, via pulley, over the heads of the audience. Though no blood dripped down onto the audience, and though the performer who was cut was HIV negative, Athey’s own HIV positive status led one audience member to claim that the crowd had been spattered with HIV-positive blood.

Within these performances, the spectator is forced into a position of passive voyeurism. The audience act as conduits for this dialogue that is critical to Athey’s performances. Whilst Athey maintains the power, the audience are left helpless as he metamorphoses himself, through methods of live body modification. Although Athey presents himself to us as an artist, he is also allowing us to observe a process of healing and catharsis. Though Athey does not use documentation in a way that is representative (ie he doesn’t exhibit this work in a gallery), videos of his work provide us with a snapshot of the experience of his performances. His use of theatre to present the ‘real’, adds further signifiers to his work. Referencing notions of catholic ritual and linking this to the idea of Christ as drug taker (although by inference) he opens up a discourse on the nature of religion and its use of ritual.


The use of blood in Franko B’s performances operates as a different signifier. Franko B is not HIV+ and he uses blood as an affirmation of life. His short pieces involve cutting, scarification and other apparent S/M practices. The direct use of his body in these performances removes any notions of ‘representation’. In order to fully experience Franko B, one has to be present as part of a complete visual, physical and emotional immersion in the work.

His performances such as ‘I Miss You’, when he walks down a canvas in a room set up like a fashion show, with photographers situated at one end, to heighten the sense of voyeurism, seek to implicate the viewer further. ‘Oh Lover Boy’ sites Franko as an ‘artists model’. To quote from Gray Watsons interview with Franko B,


"Oh Lover Boy is going to be a performance piece where again, the body is presented: it's there on the table. It is there for you to take, in a way, either to draw or to look at...the set-up is going to be almost like a life-drawing class but there is also a clinical side, where it is like you are looking at a body. But it is not passive; it is not a dead body, in a way it's giving life by bleeding. And he's looking at you".

(Gray Watson, 2000)

Franko’s performances reference his childhood being brought up by the Red Cross. Using a diatribe of medical equipment such a syringes, drip stands and wheel chairs, Franko re-enforces notions of healing, but also control, amidst the perceived chaos of his performances. He can only perform three times a year because of the amount of healing that needs to take place after his performances.

Franko’s other work, (which is regularly exhibited, unlike Ron Athey’s documentation) consists of collages and installations. His collage work, references his ‘real’ experiences, and documents his whole life. This again raises issues of vulnerability, as he is leaving nothing to the imagination. Flyers from his performances and pictures of ‘boys I went out with’ (Gray Watson, 2000) mingle with images of religious artefacts and blood stained sheets from his performances.

Issues of power arise here, as the viewer is implicated in the performance by default. Franko appears as helpless and vulnerable, but also has power over his audience. If Franko performed in the street, the context would be different and issues of legality would be raised. This issue of contextualisation also raises issues of safety and notions of control and chaos.

Both Ron Athey and Franko B have ‘medical’ helpers during their performances. They act as signifiers within the performance, to connote to the viewer notions of control and safety. This safety angle is always printed on the flyers, to reassure the viewer. There is a paradox here, as the people that are supposed to ‘help’ during Franko B’s performance, also cut him with a razor during ‘Oh Lover Boy’. The medical helpers are in fact trained body-piercers, with basic anatomy training. As soon as this fact has been established during the performance, these signifiers change.

Both Athey and Franko B as gay men question the nature of masculinity. At their performances, it is the men who recoil against the walls of the venue, normally in foetal positions, returning to maternal signifiers as if about to be castrated. The spilling of blood, whatever the connotation intended by the artist, has the effect of rendering the audience impotent, either to their own bodies or to the performance itself. They cannot help the performers, even though they feel their natural reaction is to do so.

There is also a sense that the performers are acting ‘privately’ and the viewer is intruding into a sacred shamanic ritual. Shamanism is normally associated with women, blood letting during menstruation being an important part of ‘walking with the spirits’. Although, shamans tend to operate outside the confines of accepted social practice, they act as a conduit to ‘other-worldly’ access and are relied upon by the rest of the tribe to maintain a sense of unity. Within the framework of Live Art, the performers provide this access so that the viewers themselves can reach the dark underworld of the shaman. Within Western culture, it appears that men are not supposed to reveal their feelings, let alone share any intimate details about themselves with the outside world. By the direct action onto their bodies and the use of blood, Franko and Athey challenge this notion.

The letting of blood is seen as ‘unclean’. This mythology probably originated in the Old Testament where it is seen that,


"She is to be 'put apart for her uncleanness' for seven days".

(Lev. 18:19)

“Any man who lies with her during this time is also unclean for seven days, anyone who touches her is unclean till the evening, and everything that she sitteth upon shall be unclean”.

(Lev. 15:19-24)

Throughout the history of art we have encountered images of blood from the earliest cave paintings through centuries of biblical images and through to war films such as Apocalypse Now. It both fascinates us and repulses us. It has come to represent both the sacred and profane. Live Artists use this dichotomy as a way of personal transformation. At the performances there is a sense of sacredness that transcends orthodox religious methods. This could explain why the Christian Church is opposed to such direct actions onto the body. It appals them that something non-religious can actually achieve the same transcendental experience that religion is supposed to offer. In Judaeo-Christian cultures, blood ‘sacrifice’ cannot be culturally sanctioned because of notions of idolatry, where the artist are using their own bodies to ‘redeem’ themselves as opposed to appeals to God.

In his book ‘Violence and the Sacred’, Rene Girards’ theory of sacrifice states,


"The physical metamorphoses of spilt blood can stand for the double nature of violence...Blood serves to illustrate that the same substance can stain or cleanse, contaminate or purify, drive men to fury and murder or appease their anger and restore them to life"

(Girard, 1972)

The process of purification that the artists are trying to achieve can sometimes fail, not providing the audience with the signifier of life that blood performances seek to inform the viewer about. The aforementioned performance by Ron Athey called ‘Martyrs and Saints’ which used supposed HIV blood being heaved across the heads of the audience on a pulley system created an outcry. This could be because the blood was seen as ‘polluted’, making the ‘artist an unacceptable surrogate sacrificial victim for a healthy community’ (Dawn Perlmutter, 2000). In a sense, the signifier contained within the blood changed its meaning and the ritual which was meant to be a demonstration of transcendence through bodily mutilation failed. The distance between the observer and observed was very wide and the artists role as shaman became disjointed, hence the public outcry. The success of such actions is dependent on the audience feeling close to the Live Artists performance.


The antagonism towards Live Art does not detract from the fact that Live Art is a growing method of expression. It could be seen as an attempt to disrupt societal and personal boundaries through methods of physical sacrifice and as a process of purification. Although sometimes the ritual, as in Athey’s case, can fail, it is still a ritual which people observe. With the growth of interest in body piercing and tattooing due largely to information being disseminated via the internet, what was once the reserve of underground S/M clubs has now become an overground method of artistic practice. There is an obvious need for people to get back in touch with their own bodies as the site of inquiry, as is evidenced by the recent series of events at the Tate Modern, running over the course of a weekend at the end of March this year called ‘Live Culture’. This exhibition brought together Live Artists from various schools, to inform, perform and debate. Depending on audience interest, the movement will continue to undermine social convention and will move away from the purely aesthetic and personal transformation on the part of the artists, into the realms of communal transformation.

Jason Oliver
May 2003

References

Bibliography

  • Danto, Arthur C (1986). The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. Columbia University Press: New York.
  • Eliade, M (1987). The Encyclopedia of Religion. Macmillan Publishing Co: New York.
  • Stuart, H (1997). Representation, Cultural Represenations and Signifying Practices. Bath Press Colourbooks: Glasgow.
  • Keidan, L, Morgan, S and Sinclair, S. (1998). Franko B. Black Dog Publishing: London.
  • V, Manuel, Watson, G and Wilson, S. (2001). Franko B – Oh Lover Boy. Black Dog Publishing: London.
  • V,Vale and Juno, A. (1989). Modern Primitives, An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual: Re/Search Publications: San Francisco, CA.
  • Wollheim, R. (1980). Art And Its Objects. University Press: Cambridge.


Jason Oliver is currently working on his BA (Hons) Graphic Fine Art course in London, UK. His main areas of concern are ritual, body modification, and performances linking the two. He is researching social taboos and the general public’s response to direct actions onto the body and has a special interest in the use of blood, both in art and in ‘tribal’ rituals and how it acts as different signifiers depending on cultural context.

He is an active opponent to cultural appropriation of body ritual, finding it both undermining and patronising but instead explores the role that modification plays to himself personally, without cultural references, by pushing his body into new areas of experience, with documentation being a pre-requisite.

This article was written as a precursor to his thesis, currently entitled ‘The Body as Transformative Object’. You can find Jason on IAM as coldcell.

Copyright © 2003 Jason Oliver and BMEzine.com LLC. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online August 20th, 2003 by BMEzine.com LLC in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.