Lecture 4. 25th February - Body Art

In this lecture we looked at Body Art, how the body is a place for art and how different cultures modify their bodies using tattooing procedures, and scarification. Tattooing of the skin has been around for many years and is used by different cultures to decorate the body but is also used to distinguish members of tribes or gangs by the different markings on their skin. In Africa, scarification is a mark of coming of age, and in The Yakusa, the Japanese mafia, members would have a tattoo to distinguish them as people of the gang.
Body Painting is also an art form, for example Henna tattoos are semi permanent tattoos, the Henna stains the skin a brown colour and can be painted on the skin to create different patterns.
Body Reshaping is also an extreme form of Body Art, this is where silicone implants are inserted into different parts of the face or body in order to reshape it, Orlan is a very famous artist who has used her own body to display this, by having pieces of silicone implanted into her face, and showing this to her audience by documenting it, she was also awake for these procedures.
Dr Gunther Von Hagens is a very controversial artist because he embalms bodies which have been left to medical science and has stripped them of their skin and shown the public their insides, he preserves these bodies by replacing the bodily fluids with plastics which means the bodies do not decompose and can be displayed for long periods of time. His work is controversial because these bodies are displayed in different positions which may be percieved as disrespectful but then they can be very interesting to doctors or students studying the body, because they can look at the body in much closer detail.
Performance artists also use their body as art, Orlan is one example, by recording her operations. Marina Abromovic is another performance artist, she liked playing with the past and present, in one of her works called Rhythm 10, where she made use of 10 knives and 2 tape recorders and played the game where she stabbed the area between her splayed finger, going back and forht through each space, and each time she cut herself she would pick up a new knife and start again. After she had cut herslef 10 times she would stop the tape and listen to her reactions to being cut and would then attempt to recreate this again and by recording it again.