Spike Magazine

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Feature [published March 1997]
Body Modification: Remake, Remodel
Nick Clapson enters the strange world of body modification
Tattoos. Piercing. Dreadlocks. Body Art. What is the
world coming to?
It would seem if we follow the lead of much of the
popular press a minority of degenerates are corrupting
our sensibilities, and so we are doomed. However, if
you take the time to stop and look a little longer, it seems
more likely that we actually want to be corrupted. And
this desire is not new.
There is currently an interest in utilising the body
as a site on which we can extend our creative and
psychic desires, and as such has found itself reflected
in a growing literature of its own. One such book is
Housk Randall and Ted Polhemus’ The Customised
Body. As Polhemus and Randall make clear from
the start, the impetus for this fashion in changing
the body is the influence of ‘traditional peoples’.
Other cultures, which have been traditionally termed
primitive, have a history of altering their physical
appearance for either religious and social purposes.
And it is this that the later-day primitives of our culture
are trying to tap into. Thus the piercing or the tattoos of
these ‘modern primitives’ are legitimated through the
BUY The Customized Body online from and
idea that they are some how more pure, honest and true,
because they reflect the more positive aspects of these
so-called ‘simpler’ societies. Attempts are also made
to suggest a lineage for the use of such body art by
the examination of early pre-Christian practices in the
west. However, though this may provide a precedent
for body art, it is more pertinent to question why such
practices fell from fashion for several thousand years,
and in turn, why they would have any pertinence now.
Much is made in the literature that surrounds this
particular subculture about the need for self-expression,
and the desire to feel part of a community. The subtext
of such an argument is that a certain sector of our society
feel that they can not adequately express themselves
through the more conventional means of visual expression,
be it clothes or art. The notion that other cultures
will provide us with a visual language that will release
us from this impasse is, however, not new. In art alone it
can be traced back through the major canon of western
artist, through Jackson Pollock, Picasso, Gauguin, Van
Gogh, and back into the depths of the 18th century at
least. What is new is the transition from the canvas and
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