BME: Body Modification Ezine

A tattooed person suspends from hooks, laying flat, one leg higher than the other. Their head is back, and they seem to be smiling, dark hair dangling like an anime character.

Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.

Category: ModBlog

  • September 2012 Suspension Campout

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    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.

    2012campout1

    2012campout2

    2012campout3

    2012campout4

    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

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    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.

    gen3closeup

  • Unusual Lip Orbital Piercings

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    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.

    lip-orbital

  • Inverted Superrigging

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    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.

    inverted-suspension

  • Double tragus saves the day

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I like this double tragus done (as part of a piercing seminar) by Alex Pereiro Barros of Indigenak Modification Industries in Bilboa, Spain, I assume after the client lost their first central tragus piercing to rejection. When life gives you lemons, right?

    double-tragus

Latest Tattoo, Piercing, and Body Modification News