(via Notes From Somewhere Bizarre).
TagBody Modification
Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, born Jacqueline Breyer in 1969, passed away Tuesday 9th October 2007. Lady Jaye and her partner Genesis Breyer P-Orridge spent the past several years living an “art as life project” sometimes called “Breaking Sex.” The couple altered their own appearances to look more and more like each other, forming a third ” pandrogenous” entity they called Breyer P-Orridge.
Lady Jaye met Genesis in 1993 and the couple began to align their appearances. Eventually, Genesis had gone as far as he could in making himself more feminine without surgery. So for their tenth anniversary, on Valentines Day 2003, the couple got matching breast implants together.
Genesis underwent the most visible changes, but Lady Jaye went through surgeries as well. The plan was not to make one look like the other, but for them to look like each other: to meet in the middle. In an interview with John E. Mitchell Lady Jaye said:
“My nose was made to look somewhat more like Djin’s. My chin was made to look more like Djin’s. Djin had cheek implants that resemble mine. There’s only so much that can be done in that way. We made a decision not to try to go after a conventional idea of beauty. We both could have changed our faces to look like some kind of ideal, but we wanted to look like each other, that was the idea. We didn’t want to look pretty according to someone else’s standard or anything like that.”
“Breaking Sex” was simultaneously an assault on the tyranny of gender and DNA and a deep exploration of Lady Jaye and Genesis’s relationship. In an essay titled “Our Practice in Art” Breyer P-Orridge explained the inspiration for hir art:
The work of William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin has been highly influential to us, particularly in relation to the practice of the “cut-up”. To liberate the word from linearity, they began to cut-up and, incorporating random chance, re-assembled both their own and co-opted literature “…to see what it really says…” They referred to the phenomena of profound and poetic new collisions and meanings that resulted from their intimate collaborations as the “Third Mind”. This was produced with a willingness to sacrifice their own separate, previously inviolate works and artistic “ownership”. In many ways they saw the third mind as an entity in and of itself. Something “other”, closer to a purity of essence, and the origin and source of a magical or divine creativity that could only result from the unconditional integration of two sources.
Breyer P-Orridge created art installations featuring photographs, collages, sculptures and personal items to share the experience of living in pandrogeny. The installations have appeared in galleries in both the US and Europe.
Genesis P-Orridge has not yet, to my knowledge, publicly discussed the question of whether Breyer P-Orridge died along with Lady Jaye. Lady Jaye told Mitchell “We view Breyer P-Orridge as a separate person who is both of us. Neither of us take credit for the work, the work is a melding of both of our ideas which we would not have had singly,” and “Both of us are in all of our art. That third being, Breyer P-Orridge, is always present.”
The idea that Breyer P-Orridge can exist without Lady Jaye seems counter intuitive. But consider this passage from the first Breaking Sex Manifesto:
The common view of cosmetic surgery is the Pamela Anderson archetype. In fact it is incredible how her particular idealized look has spread to hundreds of thousands of women. Almost as if she has cloned herself. Apart from the group idealization of an image made flesh this also culturally engineers a shift in what is an acceptable or desirable way to look both in terms of physiological technique and perceptual aspiration for people across all social and economic boundaries . The drone may mimic the queen.
Lady Jaye Breyer P. Orridge is dead. But she lives on through Genesis, and through the body of work the two created together. I don’t know if this extreme body transformation will catch on. But I’m certain that the sacrifices she made for art were not in vein. Her dedication has raised the bar for everyone.
More information:
John A. Mitchell’s interview with Jady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge.
Mitchell’s article on Breaking Sex.
Breaking Sex section of Genesis P-Orridge’s site.
Sex TV documentary “Breaking Sex” about Breyer P-Orridge (includes excerpt).
(This article original appeared in Key 64)
“Marketing experts know that consumers use products to help construct personal identity. When a person decides to purchase a Hummer rather than a Prius, for instance, that person is also buying a certain lifestyle or attitude. And with so many products to choose from, it is easy to change one’s identity by simply purchasing different products.
But what about tattoos? For marketing researchers, tattoos present interesting questions because unlike clothes, jewelry, cars and even houses, tattoos do not change. They are permanent, infinitely customized and essentially immutable products. A University of Arkansas researcher says people use tattoos as a way to find meaning, permanence and stability – and thus a coherent identity – in an increasingly complex and fragmented world. “
(via Physorg)
I actually kinda like this one, but there are some pretty bad ones here. Some pics are NSFW.
(Thanks Jessica!)
Earlier this year, Stelarc finally found a medical doctor willing to implant a cell-cultivated ear beneath the skin on the artist’s forearm.
[…]
Stelarc is apparently planning to go through a few more surgeries to give it more definition.
“He’s also going to implant a mic inside the ear that will connect to a bluetooth transmitter, so the ear can broadcast audio from the internet wirelessly,” explains former BB guestblogger and sometimes Stelarc collaborator Karen Marcelo. “That Stelarc, always got something up his sleeve! He likes to say that too. ”
(Thanks Natasha!)
Subdermals are old news in my book, but Wired News has this piece that makes it more compelling:
Shannon Larratt was a child when he first dreamed about modifying his body. When his father would make pizza and sit with him to watch Star Trek, Larratt was captivated by the diverse looks of people from other worlds. He was particularly taken with the forehead ridges.
In Larratt’s ideal world, “Everyone looks interesting, everyone looks different.” So when body modification artist Steve Haworth invented a way to implant jewelry under human skin, Larratt jumped on the opportunity.
From the Independent:
Transsexuals are permitted to have sex-change operations in Iran by the decree of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself. The founder of the Islamic republic passed a fatwa allowing one transsexual woman to have the operation because sexual ambiguity made it impossible for her to carry out her religious duties properly. Iran now has dozens of people who have had a sex change.
Full Story: The Independent: Ten very surprising things about Iran
Speaking of Genesis P. Orridge, here’s a new interview with him:
I had an epiphany about the nature of the words themselves. Each word behaves in ways that attest to the idea that in a very particular way it, THE WORD is alive and can even have its own agenda as a result of repetition and transmission in ever more compressed layers over linear time whilst apparently serving the message of the being using the word. I believe words are alive then in a very literal sense, and because each word is alive it?s another hologram, another iceberg. Everyone who has ever said that particular word has invested it with their story and anyone who hears that word puts the context of their life around that word. So each word is a memory box and a prophecy box simultaneously. They’re very precious, powerful particles of thought and energy.
(via New World Disorder)
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