Anarchy Ear

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Last year Eric Stango of Lifestyles in Connecticut entered this over-the-top ear project in the Earmageddon contest. It didn’t win, but I think they should have given him some special Chaos Magick award or something. This seems like the sort of piercing that might grow on the ear of Tetsuo the Iron Man. The sort of thing that happens when one of Joeltrons “trondustrials” escapes from Arkham Asylum. My hat would be off to Eric and this piercing, but the piercing already stole my hat and ate it. I forgive it though, because it’s an awful lot of fun to watch.

By the way I want to point out that what you see hanging out at the bottom, from the tragus and the lobe, aren’t just dangly bits — they’re actually attaching to a surface piercing on the sideburn, as you can see from the inset “before” picture. Click to zoom in for a better look.

Illusion — Two implants or three?

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One type of implant I’ve always liked are the ones that mess with the person’s anatomy — Eaten Placenta’s ribcage bumps are a good example, as are these forearm implants (manufactured by Alejandro Hernandez) done on Johan Guardia by Juan Castro of Poder Sin Limites Body Mods (“Unlimited Power Body Mods”) in Alajuela, Costa Rica. Now, assuming my Spanish isn’t failing me, this is “doble joroba”, that is, two implants, not three, done using 12mm (1/2″) x 55mm (2″) Teflon half-domes. The third bump is the natural bump of Johan’s wrist, and I think Juan has done a great job cleanly aesthetically integrating this implant into Johan’s anatomy.

But what I really love about this particular implant is that if Johan ever has to go to a hospital ER, it’s going to the make the doctors FREAK THE FUCK OUT as they imagine the horrible compound fracture in his arm. That said, I won’t be so amused if the doctors break his arm trying to fix what doesn’t need fixing!

Coming at you like a frieght train!

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Could there possibly be a better tattoo to celebrate ModBlog’s new superfast servers that Jon set up for us last night? I know how happy it makes me as someone who used to have to wait minutes for edits to my entries to be accepted, so I hope it makes you happy as a reader as well.

I’m also really happy to see that tattoo artists have been posting more healed work lately, showing the public what they’re really capable of. If this trend continues, it will really separate the great tattoo artists from people who are simply great artists. Just because someone can paint doesn’t mean they can lay in a tattoo that will look good for your lifetime (as you may recall from the controversial entry on tattoo fading and a couple followup entries). I’m very happy to point out that California-based tattoo artist Cory Norris (corynorrisart.com) is more than capable of doing both. Even though this photo of Ricky’s chest that he did looks like it was taken the day it was done, it’s actually fully healed in this picture, even though the blacks are deep, the red flames are incredibly vibrant, the shading in the clouds is still rich and you can make out the ghostly seething skulls inside, but the touch I really like is the deep red glow inside the eyes of the skull in the train’s engine, as if it has hellish glowing coal embers for brains.

Thanks again to Cory Norris — let’s hope top artists keep on posting healed work, really letting the world know who can be trusted to implant art that will last a lifetime — not just win you a “best of show” tattoo convention plaque and then fade out a month later. Let’s put the emphasis back on real tattoos. Click to see it a bit bigger of course.

FTW Update and Nose Skin Removal

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As you know, I’m a fan of body modification master Thorsten Sekira at Silver Studio (silverstudio.at) in Vienna, Austria and I recently posted a couple of his large-scale scarifications. Today I wanted to feature some of his smaller scale work that he’s done on Pauli’s face. The FTW forehead — I’m consistently surprised at how subtle forehead scarification often is — was done almost two years ago (January 2011), so it’s well healed in the pictures that show the fresh skin peeling on the nose. Given the fine structure of the nose and its zero margin for error and the fact that it’s slightly different from the normal body surface skin that artists are more familiar with, this is definitely the sort of scarification best reserved for artists with Thorsten’s level of experience.

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The first picture can be zoomed in.

As an aside I gotta say I’m really loving the “13″ eyelid tattoo! And it’s always a great pleasure not just watching scars heal, but watching body modification collections on major enthusiasts like Pauli grow. It’s a real treat. Some day I’d love to see someone put together a comprehensive book that tracks a multitude of heavily modded people over a ten-or-more-year window, perhaps with a big coffee-table page-spread dedicated to each person with photos showing how their aesthetic evolved over time. If I had more time on this planet I’d sign myself up to tackle such a project, but since I don’t, I hope someone will steal the idea (or has already had it independently).

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September 2012 Suspension Campout

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After posting the highly technical suspensions from Italy and Japan with intricate static rigging, it’s nice to see the other — and equally beautiful and profound — end of things. Cere just dropped me a message this morning to take a look at his page where he’d been collecting images from their Suspension Campout this past weekend — below are four of my favorites (whittling it down was nearly impossible). That reminds me, while I’m thinking of Cere and his band of merry misfits, a wonderful article was just published in The Atlantic that heavily features him. It’s titled “The Therapeutic Experience of Being Suspended by Your Skin” and is one of the most positive articles about suspension that I’ve seen to date in the mainstream press.

Anyway, I’m sure that this waterfall location will seem familiar to those who’ve admired previous outdoor Rites of Passage events. I don’t know what it is about water, but for me, it just goes so well with suspension. I don’t know if it’s the meditative quality of water, or the idea of being hung between sky and sea, or if it’s just the simple beauty of nature. But it really works for me. I also have enormous respect for people like Cere and the others in Rites of Passage and iHung and the many other suspension groups that are now well into their second decade of bringing something very special to people’s lives. They’re giving of themselves in ways that profoundly alter the course of lives for the better, but the world rarely sees it or thanks them for it.

There’s magic in this world because we create it.

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I’m so moved by these pictures that there’s little I can say about them that won’t come off super-cheesy. I’m sure more pictures will show up in BME’s galleries as time goes by — please add your pictures via the normal channels!

One year old 3rd gen transdermal closeup

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Samppa von Cyborg (voncyb.org) has just post a nice closeup of a one year old implantation of three of his third generation transdermal implants — you may remember that we documented them in detail in an article posted in July (read that if you haven’t already). As you can see, even in this troublesome placement, with long hair around them, the healing is superb, showing only minor dryness around the exit points. I’m quite sure that the more time that passes, the more vindication these design improvements will experience.

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Unusual Lip Orbital Piercings

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Mike Knight from Velvet Grip Family Tattoo in West Hollywood, California sent me this fascinating little lip project he did. I was a bit worried when I first saw it because there’s a right way to do this piercing and a wrong way, and the sad truth is that most of the time it gets done the wrong way. But I’m quite happy to report that what you’re seeing here is a healed project. Mike did it by first doing four lip piercings (two on each side) using 12ga labrets. When those healed, he replaced them with a pair of 12ga D-rings with gemstone beads, giving the client a unique bit of body art that I’d wager few have seem before.

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Inverted Superrigging

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I was thinking about the “musical arc” of suspension, and if we’re going to compare the early suspension movement to all the little rock’n’roll bands that sprouted up across the Western World in the 1950s and 1960s, then I think that some of the suspension masters today — Havve of Pain Solution and Wings of Desire being a prime example — are in their prog rock phase. Prog rock was characterized with an absurd level of musical technical expertise and composing complexity that’s never been outdone in popular music, and I think suspension today is much like that — extreme technical feats, with complex and beautiful rigging that’s harder and harder to outdoe. I was about to wonder whether some sort of punk rock renaissance was next in suspension, a rejection of all this engineer-artistry and replacing it with guerrilla two-hook suicide suspension with a couple of shark hooks, but then I realized that one of the great things about suspension is that it’s not a matter of changing and exclusive tastes — it’s a matter of broadening tastes. Havve still plays in his garage punk band on the side while noodling away with the Musical Box-era Genesis of the suspension scene in Italy!!!

Rambling aside, I really do continue getting blown away by every new suspension photo set I see (these are from Christianne’s collection) from the Italian Suscon — whenever the best minds in suspension get together at these events (and a big thank you to Allen Falkner and his Dallas Suscon for setting that in motion), amazing and inspiring things always happen.

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