ihung.org

Since there has been a lot of confusion surrounding the relationships between ihung, Only Flesh, and Modified Soul, which was furthered by some (unintentionally) erroneous information in an earlier post, it’s only right to clarify it all.

Only Flesh has been a performance art, body art, rock & roll act for, well, longer than I really remember. I remember seeing them at 1470s in Dayton, Ohio back around 2000 and during the show, Rev did some crazy bloodletting and bleeding on stage, the likes of which I’d never seen in person. This was before I’d done my first suspension or flesh pull, so I was blown away. I’d had some previous exposure to body art as performance art, but it always seemed distant since my knowledge was primarily from reading about Stelarc, Ron Athey, Bob Flanagan, and the like. Several years later, Rev approached ihung to do his first suspension, which began our working relationship.

Modified Soul came around as a shop around 2004 (I think), and it quickly became a hub of suspension activity in Columbus. The founder, Dave, had been involved with suspensions for several years at the time, having worked alongside members of CoRE and been a body piercer for a long while. Dave and I became fast friends and worked together quite a lot, although in the beginning, we remained separate suspension groups. His group was called Modified Soul (also the name of his piercing shop) and consisted of a handful of awesome members, and when we started discussing legality and all that that entails, we realized that doing suspensions under the name of the shop might not be the best move so far as the law is concerned. We discussed it with members of ihung and Modified Soul before agreeing to unify under the name ihung. This was a tremendous day for both groups and I’m certain that I speak for all those involved in saying that it’s brought us all together for the best and pushed all of us to being better practitioners.

This unification wasn’t without it’s hardships though; Dave had been working with Only Flesh to facilitate Rev Lower’s suspension/body mod ideas for Only Flesh shows, whereas ihung had taken a staunch “no shows” stand. Now that Modified Soul and ihung were one and the same, we had to figure out how this would work out. Only Flesh’s suspension shows are performed and planned, and executed by Only Flesh, whose members largely overlap with ihung’s. Rev Lower is the creative mastermind behind the shows, but that’s not all they do. Ever since the early days of Rev’s suspension career, Only Flesh has also facilitated private suspensions of their own for those who are interested. Often times, these suspensions involve members of Only Flesh, ihung and Nu Ethix, and many other groups! One can easily see how it gets confusing.

The overlap of members, constantly working together, and the usual gossip and miscommunication that happen in the modified community, it all gets complicated. Thus, this post came about to try to make some sense of it all, and to clarify our relationships. Simply put, Only Flesh is their own, unique and highly talented entity, which rarely gets the credit they deserve because most people (falsely) believe that they are ihung, and my previous post really didn’t do much towards giving Only Flesh their proper recognition. Which means, next time you see Rev Lower, let him know how awesome Only Flesh is! So, I wanted to take the opportunity to publicly apologize to Rev Lower for previously misrepresenting him and Only Flesh as well as to thank them for being awesome to work with.