(Check out Jonathan Marlow’s A Body to Live In, it hits Blu-ray May 26. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
“Body is the door to Spirit”
What is a body (and to what extent can a body be pushed to—or even beyond—its physical limitations)? What exactly is identity, “real” or “fabricated” (or is it merely some hybrid of the two or something else altogether)? What, for that matter, is art? What happens when all of these disparate threads intersect?
A Body to Live In is an overdue and much-anticipated documentary on the life of performance artist Fakir Musafar (née Roland Loomis). Anyone familiar with V. Vale’s RE/Search publication MODERN PRIMITIVES has encountered the “teachings” of Musafar, a proponent of enlightenment through constriction, restriction, contortion and body modification. His performances (and those of other acolytes) led to sideshow-like demonstrations of piercing and suspension, interconnected on occasion with ritualistic tattooing and scarification.
Seemingly, my initial introduction to the persona of Fakir Musafar was his cameo in Monika Treut’s legendary Die Jungfrauenmaschine (Virgin Machine). Itself an inspiration, illustrating with clarity that a seemingly ordinary individual in appearance could be extraordinary under the surface-garments. Preconceptions? Begone, dull care.
Pain, oversimplified, is merely a signal that something, somewhere in the body, has gone wrong. Can the mind transcend the pain of the body? It can. Can the receptors of pain and pleasure become intertwined? They can. Can gratification and enlightenment converge and merge? Indeed, it / they can.
Fakir Musafar’s private practice of waist-reduction and hook-suspension found a public audience in the Bay Area BDSM community of the 1980s, leading to his quarterly of Body Play and Modern Primatives throughout the 1990s. Admittedly, much of the misguided aspects of cultural appropriation have not aged well, riddled with historical inaccuracies and two-spirit simulacrum. Choosing “Fakir” as a name—combined with “Musafar” [loosely, “traveler”]—and its quasi-religious connotations in a non-religious setting always struck me as an acknowledgement of the illusory nature of so-called modern primitivism (itself, a problematic naming convention, not unlike the reclaiming of “queer” as a non-pejorative).
Director Angelo Madsen is no stranger to any of these essential themes (as his earlier North by Current beautifully demonstrated). If we have merely one pass in this peculiar skin-suit, our bodies should conform to our identities and not the other way ‘round.
A Body to Live In is necessary viewing for the body-curious or anyone uncomfortable in—yet seeking comfort with—their own skin. Everyone, then? Everyone.
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Angelo Madsen will be venturing back to Seattle for a Q&A session at NWFF (co-presented by Scarecrow) on 2-May, smack-dab in the middle of A Body to Live In’s three-day run. [Appropriate, ultimately, since we initially met at NWFF.]
Thereafter, own it on Blu-ray circa 26-May!
— Jonathan Marlow, Executive Director | SV Archive [Scarecrow Video]
