ihung.org

While doing a little light reading about Stelarc for my last post, I re-read a lot of his views on suspension and the body.  I can’t recommend reading his reasons for suspending nearly enough as they are rather foreign (at least in expression) from the modern community, which seems to largely derive from Fakir, and thus Modern Primitives, as well as Allen and company’s work in the early-mid 90′s.  Reading him talk about the “creaking of the skin” really resonates with me as a shared experience, which is pretty interesting in it’s own right, and one that many of us in the community can readily identify with.

Photo: Nina Kuo

Stelarc performed his first suspension event in 1978 and supposedly his final one in 1988, long before the days of BME and the suspension explosion (relative, of course) of the early 2000s.  However, he very recently, 8 March 2012, performed another suspension, a “superman” in modern terms, in Melbourne for the Scott Livesey Galleries entitled Ear an Arm Suspension.  That’s amazing!  To return to an art form you haven’t been a part of in 24 years is spectacular! I’d love the opportunity to discuss how his experience changed from the previous events to this one.

Photo: Claudio Oyarce

Speaking of, our good friends Wings of Desire are hosting a Body Suspension Symposium in Oslo, Norway 19-21 October of this year and their special guest of honor is none other than Stelarc!  Other guests include Allen Falkner, Steve Joyner, Paul King (a personal favorite lecturer), as well as the Wings of Desire team.

As Hook Life has already covered, Wings of Desire are celebrating their 10 year anniversary by crowd funding a photography book documenting their first 10 years. It’s up to us, the suspension community, to make certain that this happens as it’s immensely important that our world is documented in a variety of ways, and like Allen mentioned, there hasn’t been a book like this since Stelarc‘s Obsolete Body: Suspension, and I can think of no group to better represent the modern community than WoD.

If you are interested in suspension, photography, subculture history, art in general, or just want to support some amazing artists and performers, pre-order a copy of their book!

I finally got around to printing out some ihung stickers to give out Dallas SusCon, so if you are going to be there, hit me up and I’ll give you some. We should have some available afterwards to hand out wherever as well.
edit: I completely forgot to thank Dave and Marah for creating the image and making it printable, and Guerilla Printing for getting them to me so quickly!