I hope to show the audience that members of the extreme body modification subculture aren’t psychotic miscreants, but rather use their bodies as canvases for symbolic representations of their own identities. Through those representations, modifiers inform others of who they are and how they want to shape their relationships. I want my audience to understand how and why modification is a form of storytelling that impacts all types of interactions.
In order to effectively educate my audience about extreme body modification, I will need lots and lots of imagery. Which is why I decided (for my course’s final project) to plan/curate an art exhibit as my final media representation for this subculture. I want the first few rooms to serve as the backstory (background and history) that will help shape the experience of the rest of the exhibit.
After that, each room will be designated to a specific country/culture, so that the modifications associated with that place can be displayed in detail.*** Each room will have a different combination of images, videos, audio/text from authentic modifiers, guest speakers/representatives and performance artists. Some rooms might be set up to replicate the space that modifiers inhabit at the time of their modification (i.e. a tattoo parlor in the United States or the local sorcerer’s cowshed in West Africa).
I don’t want this exhibit to retain a “freak” show quality, so performance artists and guest speakers will only be placed on a voluntary basis. Their purpose is to answer questions that will help further the audience’s understanding of the relationship between body modification and identity construction. These ‘spokespersons’ are the physical, accurate representations of each modification and its relationship to the predominant culture. No less, no more.
Questions, when not answered through these representatives, can also be answered through pre-recorded interviews with modifiers, displayed either through a video or a series of audio clips along the wall to be listened to through headphones. In the duration of the exhibit, I would also like to invite experts in anthropology and sociology to give the audience an understanding of the academic discourse surrounding this subculture. How are they talking about extreme body modification? Is it different than the way the mainstream discusses the subculture?
With these components, I hope to teach the audience that body modification isn’t just about spectacle. There are true purposes behind the scars and the blood and that’s what I want my audience to see. The story doesn’t just exist on paper, it lives in our skin, too.
***Under each country page, I will clearly state an idea of what I would like for the physical representation to be in that room of the exhibit. These representations are intended to engage the audience and help bring the modification down to a more understandable, normalized level.