BME: Body Modification Ezine

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Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.

Category: ModBlog

  • Skin Removal Scarification = Profit?

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Australian Israeli-born and currently Iceland-based conceptual jeweler Sruli Recht — who tends to have a wonderful sci-fi aesthetic to his fashion and design that is less silly than much of the “far out” ideas too-often presented by his field — recently had a roughly 1/2″ by 4″ strip of skin cut off his belly which was then tanned and wrapped around a 24k gold ring, now being offered for a half million dollars. The somewhat grotesque design doesn’t just look like random leather — it’s even got wiry belly hair. He calls it the “Forget Me Knot”. Recht has lots of experience working with dubious organic materials — animal and fish remains including a stillborn lamb, hair, spider silk from a modified goat — but this is the first time he’s used human skin.

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    Here’s a graphic YouTube video of the procedure and some stills from it. The procedure is actually quite fascinating if you’re more used to the sort of skin removal scars done in the body modification world where the concern is the scar, rather than the excised tissue. You’ll see the doctor first spend a surprisingly long time anesthetizing the area, then cutting the outline using a scalpel, and then quickly cutting off the strip of skin using a pair of surgical scissors. Next you’ll see an interesting use of an electrocautery tool to stop small bleeders, where instead of applying the electrocautery tool to the wound itself, the vessels are pinched using tweezers, which are then electrified. Finally the wound is sutured closed.

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    Recht’s work is in a way another example of the “fine art” world catching up to and borrowing from the body modification world (Recht is no outsider though, and has tattoos as well as large gauge inner conch piercings), which has been using procedure remnants in jewelry for ages. Here are a few examples formerly featured on BME — a couple examples of removed nipples encased in cast acrylic resin (this seems to be a trend!), and a heart-shaped piece of human skin and cartilage inside a set of earplugs, also cast in clear resin. Below the pictures are a list of the previous entries that cover them in more detail.

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    PS. If anyone wants a strip of my belly skin — I have plenty of it, more than I need — I’ll sell it to you for a hell of a lot less than a half million dollars!

  • Mega-Conch Removal Reversal

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Those with very long memories may recognize the ear in this photo, because it was featured on ModBlog in the 2008 interview with Howie/LunaCobra (click here to see it then). Initially the customer wanted one of the most radical conch removals, creating a hole that encompassed not just the inner conch (primarily the cymba, the upper half), but the outer (a good chunk of the triangular fossa and the anterior crus of the antihelix or “rook ridge”) as well. Howie expertly accomplished this, and it healed nicely and the customer seemed happy with it for years. But as with many procedures — as you’ve seen with the deluge of tattoo removals and lobe stretching reversals — tastes change, and the customer decided to have the procedure partially reversed to build a more normal (and more structurally stable) ear.

    As regular readers know, when it comes to body modification reversals, there are few people more capable than Samppa von Cyborg (voncyb.org). I’ve seen conch closures in the past (here’s one by Quentin), but this is definitely the biggest to date, and anything bigger might not be possible. I’d say this ear is at the edges of what can safely by rebuilt short of growing new tissue (possible, but out of the reach of the bodmod community for now), and Samppa has very successfully put it back together. Reversing some procedures isn’t too hard — lobe stretching reversals tend to be universally successful — but when you start talking about procedures built around amputating tissue, it gets harder and harder. I hope that modified people, especially young people, take a very hard look at the fact that more and more and more procedures are starting to be reversed, and spend more time considering whether they really want to jump into procedures that are difficult to reverse — as I’ve commented before, the potential permanence is one of my big worries about eyeball tattoos.

    Either way, nice work in these photos by both Howie (lunacobra.net) on the initial ear, and later Samppa (voncyb.org) on the reconstruction.

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  • F-ing Birds!

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    It feels like it’s always the same… All you wanna do is lick a boob, and then — BOOM! — some damn bird decides to roost on your tongue. This moment in frustration immortalized by Andre Cruz Tattoo (andrecruztattoo.com.br).

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  • The Shaped Transdermals of MaxArt

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    As I’ve mentioned before, Gabriele of MaxArt Body Piercing in Italy has been creating innovative shaped transdermals (to say nothing of his invention of the Skin Tunnel invention), starting with a cross-shaped one, and most recently a teardrop shaped one. Let me update you on the cross-shaped one first. I have to admit that I expected the skin to retract — I didn’t think this would be successful. But much to my surprise, even at three weeks in (which is when the two larger shots were taken), the skin rather than retracting, seems to be pulling in toward the implant. This is most likely due to Gabriele’s design decision of cross-drilling the transdermal (which you can see in the shots of the jewelry).

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    Most recently Gabriele has done a tear-shaped one as well, another piece of great design. Obviously some of these aesthetics can also be accomplished by putting shaped beads on normal transdermals, but these are much more powerful on closer inspection. Now all we have to wait for is the cheap knockoffs of his design — I’m already seeing horrendous clones of his skin tunnel that have none of the beautiful high-quality titanium machining that is typical of Gabriele’s transdermals and Skin Tunnels (manufactured by Veleno Web).

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  • Micro-Implants by Dysmorphic

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    This star is one of the bigger ear implants that I’ve seen — you really couldn’t push its diameter much bigger without potentially running into problems. The topographically sculpted silicone star is about 15mm across, which was the biggest implant that Erwan of Dysmorphic in Lyon, France could fit in the location. The other implant pictured below, the question mark placed behind the ear, is also custom carved, as are all of Erwan’s micro-implants. Click either for a closer look.

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