My partner in crime and I drove down to Bournemouth for the bank holiday weekend to join Louis of AMF for a fashion show at Pandora’s Box fetish & burlesque event. It was great to catch up with Mr. Fleischauer and get hooked up for the occasion.
A few weekends back I was wearing a dress at some party that called for a formal dress code and felt very embarrassed and self concious about the suspension & hook scars across my back. You can see them in this picture, the older ones have faded but the most recent ones (from May) are still raised and pink. This weekend I realised I should stop being ashamed of them – they’re signs of strength after all.
“For a period of time, while we believe it to be perfectly still, lifeless flesh responds, stirs and contorts in a final macabre ballet. Are these spasms merely erratic motions or do they echo the chaotic twists and turns of a past life?”
Haunting and beautiful, this trailer for Danse Macabre leaves me desperate to see the full version, but I can find annoyingly little info about it. Looks like it’s showing at festivals only at the moment.
A Friday round up of links and other lovely internet things. This ones a bit of a lazy edition as I’ve posted a lot of these on my Twitter recently.
++ The image above is from the incredible Car Crash Study series by Nicolai Howalt. His close ups of dents and scratches, studies of spent airbags and shots of destroyed and shattered windscreens turn the violence of a car crash into something still and quite beautiful
++ Bunnylicious – A blog that solely displays pictures of bunnies, and I don’t mean CuteOverload style pictures of rabbits being adorable, I mean Bunnylicious finds surreal, disturbing, cute and sexy artwork with one thing in common – it features bunnies.
++ A rare fashion-related link, I’m not usually a fan of personal style blogs but I do think that fetish model/artist/stylist Sohui has crazyhot style and I’m into her white-blonde har and lack of eyebrows. Her blog – Filth in the Beauty – is pretty new but I think, worth following.
++ Interview with the legendary Marina Abramovic regarding her recent endurance piece ‘The Artist Is Present’ in New York.
++ Piece by one of the artists who recreated Marina’s work during her retrospective at MOMA: The Artist Laid Bare. The idea of recreating other peoples performances is strange and fascinating to me. Want to explore my thoughts on it all.
I’ve been crazy busy since Torture Garden and as much as I’ve wanted to update with the many, amazing photos from the two shows I did there, I just haven’t been able to find the time. That said, I simply had to find a minute to post these two awesome bits of coverage of my suspension during the Rachel Friere fashion show.
The show was a total blast, very professionally organised, and a lot of fun backstage. Her clothes are so, so beautiful. I’d found them very striking in images I’d seen online but when you see them up close, they’re something else. The subtleties and details are amazing, and everything looks a lot more delicate and feminine than I’d expected.
All hair for the show was done by the incomparable Robert Masciave, who also shot video footage of the show. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen video of a suspension I’ve done and I love it.
Rachel also got some excellent coverage of the show over at Tank Magazine’s blog, where there’s a write up of the show, interview with Rachel and many photos from the performance and backstage. It’s really interesting for me to see how people outside the modification and fetish world see suspension. Check out Tank’s opinion here: Rachel Friere Couture Show
In addition to the Car Crash Clan piece I’ll be appearing in with Suka Off, I’ll be on the Torture Garden stage earlier in the night for Rachel Freire’s fashion show/catwalk performance.
Rachel’s last show at Torture Garden was a collaboration with Lady Lucie latex and was basically unlike any fashion show I’d seen before. Check the video to see what I mean, it’s not the best quality but you get a few glimpses of the striking stigmatic special effects.
This time round Rachel is working with both myself and French body modification artist Lukas Zpira, hopefully we will create a piece that’s even more memorable than her Easter show.
Super excited to post this flyer from Suka Off advertising 3 new performances that will take place in the ‘Crash play area’ at this years Torture Garden Birthday Ball. It’s a stunning image and I’m really excited to be collaborating with Suka Off once again on a new piece Car Crash Clan – for someone as Ballard/Cronenberg obsessed as I it’s a bit of a dream come true to be performing Crash-inspired work amongst ruined car parts. Can’t wait!
Finally, another edition of the infrequent but delicious Mixtape. My grand plans of making it happen weekly didn’t exactly get off the ground but hopefully there’s a few dirty, arty treats here that should make the wait worthwhile.
++ The J.G Ballard inspired Crash exhibition at the Gagosian gallery has now ended (boo!) but there’s a great selection of images online here
++ Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project is probably the greatest name for an exhibition I’ve ever heard and there’s some very cool photos from this exhibition, of a project in progress by Bruce LeBruce, which was held in LA and is related to his upcoming film LA Zombie. I love the blood smears surrounding the photos! As the title suggests, the images are hardcore, meaning you can see cock in them, so be careful clicking that link. As an aside, I saw Bruce working on part of this project at an event in London, I was totally in lust with his naked, bloody zombie guys.
++ Glass shells for hermit crabs! I found this strange, beautiful picture and had no idea really where it came from or what it was about, after a bit of research I discovered that some marine biologists in New Zealand created glass shells so they could study the crabs better by seeing inside their homes. More information can be found here. Fascinating.
++ IArtist kits allow you to make recreations of well known modern art works, from Hirst’s diamond skull to Emin’s tent.The one that caught my eye though was the Mark Quinn kit – your very own blood head sculpture for £20 – I have no idea if this is a spoof site or a genuine product, but it amuses me.
[Image = Crashed by Richard Prince. As seen at the Gagosian Crash exhibition]
So once again I fall behind, massively, on updating this page, I’ll skip the predictable excuses and get straight to the good stuff.
Almost exactly a year ago I performed in a cage next to the dance floor at Torture Garden. The piece got a brief mention in an issue of Scarlet that I mentioned on here at the time and just recently I received some amazing photos of the installation from Kamil Janowski. Here’s a handful of my faves.
So I have been neglecting this blog terribly and that’s such a shame as I have had loads of fascinating stuff going on and now have made loads of exciting plans for the future of this site and for Trauma Unit in general. One of those plans is to update more, so I’m hoping I can bring lots of beautiful things to this site as the new year starts.
Here’s a quick and very enthusiastic round up of things that have happened since my last post!
+ Developed and performed ‘Girls Girls Girls’ with Kate Bowtell of Switch Performance. Working on this project with Kate was a big change from how I’m used to performing – there was no blood letting for a start, it was a dance piece and also we had regular rehearsals – but I really enjoyed exploring a new way of working and getting some insight into how other performers create work.
+ The image above, of myself and Kate during our first ‘Girls Girls Girls’ was taken by the lovely Izaskun Gonzalez of Compulsive Behavior. She used what I believe to be an old, slightly broken camera to take some stunningly sinister pictures of the performance. Izas is one of the many creative people I’m very happy to have met recently.
+ Also in my absence I was visited by the always inspiring Suka Off. It was a whirlwind visit in which they packed in 2 photo shoots, 2 video shoots and 1 trip to a pizzeria with myself, Franko B and Manuel Vason.
I performed as part of their new Inside Flesh project (use the password ‘carnalfluidity’ to access the website) in a video I’ll be revelaing more about soon, and then assisted in the filming of a powerful collaboration involving Franko getting covered in black liquid latex and Manuel shooting some incredible images as myself & Sylvia Suka filmed it all. The project is called ‘Black Dragon’ and you can view some of the images here.
+ Discovered Kleinkunst, a fascinating blend of academic papers and live performances. It’s apparently a series of 3 events and I attended the second, where amongst others Marisa Carnesky and Lucifire were speaking on the theme of the ‘Pleasures of Brutality.’ Luci’s talk on Grotesque Burlesque was especially good, as she explained how and why she mixes beauty and suffering in her own performances. I was experiencing my own form of suffering, with a really sore throat and lost voice on the night, so couldn’t engage in the discussions as much as I would have liked. I’m definitely going to be at the next one and have been keeping an eye on the events Facebook page to see what the theme will be.
The above image (Which I swiped from Facebook) is from the piece that Lucifire performed on the night. Luci and her partner Dave Tusk danced a darkly romantic and very bloody tango, it was very beautiful and for me a perfect illustration of the events ‘Pleasures of Brutality.’
So here’s a few pictures from ‘behind the scenes’ at the AMF performance last month. A team of 9 performers, piercers and musicians from 4 different countries came together to create an intense ritual of noise and flesh for the crowd in Nancy. An amazing experience and a great chance to catch up with old friends.
The man himself, Louis Fleischauer, covered in blood and black paint after the show.
Me, backstage, taking pictures in the mirror after my suspension. The most impressive part of my outfit has been removed here but I wanted some shots of the hooks in my back.
Closer (though annoyingly blurry) shot of my hooks and blood. The piercings were all expertly and enjoyably done by Sarge of Metal Fatigue. Love that guy!
This shot has nothing to do with the AMF show but I love it. It’s Clement of Xenomorph -3 in a quick pic I grabbed as he was on the way to shower after performing ‘Vanitas, Omnia Vanitas’. I annoyingly missed his piece so I have no idea what caused all this blood, but I’m planning to see his upcoming performance at Torture Garden Halloween where all will be made clear.
I’ll update again soon with some of the amazing pictures we have of the performance, my costume – which was attached to hooks in my back and face – has to be seen to be believed.
