Monday, 9 May 2011
On Saturday evening in London I watched, for as long as I could bear, the American performance artist Miss Crash. Her show involves sticking long needles through her face and torso and also suspending herself from hooks through the skin of her back and knees. I hope I'm describing this correctly because, as I admit, I didn't watch the entire show.
Her website says "Though the mainstream public may not find her choices ideal for themselves..." I would say that this was exactly correct. But she certainly seemed to go down a storm on Saturday at Torture Garden.
I don't pretend to know a thing about this activity. Wikipedia suggests that body suspension goes back to the Native American Mandan tribe, for whom it was some kind of ritual. I think it's fairly safe to say that body suspension was first brought to the attention of current generations by Fakir Musafar in the late 1970s (he's a man that I've also photographed) and it's now become associated with the current popularity of tattooing and body modification, that began in the early 1990s.
That said, it will be a long time before I decide to have a go.
The photograph above was taken at her home in Los Angeles in January of this year.