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Writing as an artist who also has a strong extra curricular interest in S & M, I was struck recently at how much my two worlds were colliding, not only in my own work but also in the work of other artists who are my contemporaries. In recent years there has been resurgence of interest in using the body as a primary focus in performance art. The onset of the AIDS epidemic began to highlight issues of the fragility of the body and its corporeality. The interest in the visceral may also be a reaction to the increasing mediation and reliance on technology in art in the age of multi-media and the Internet. Performance art focusing around the body and its limitations and vulnerabilities is very much rooted in the here and now, the specificity of this body and this moment. The same kind of almost magical shared experience is something which is taken from BDSM play. Both body art and BDSM have an immediacy, which produces a shared experience between spectators and performer.

In addition to shamanic endurance, many contemporary artists performing now have utilized the imagery of BDSM through shorter performance pieces where the use of bodily fluids is central to the aesthetics of the performance. These actions often use practices taken directly from edge play activities in BDSM: cutting, piercing, fire cupping.

Blood is the focus of these works for it's aesthetic values: the beauty of the color and texture of freshly spilt blood and its negative connotations of violence, suffering, and, especially post-AIDS, contamination. In my own 2000 performance, Catholic Sex, I wanted to use cutting and piercing of my own body in performance, partly as a literal enactment of episodes in the gospel, partly because of the beauty of the blood in what was a very visually driven and colorful (literally!) piece. The moment of piercing my own breasts was for me a literalization of the moment where the Virgin is told upon Christ's crucifixion, "you will feel as though a sword has pierced your own breast." In the same way the cutting of my palms and feet with a razor was a literal enactment of the sympathetic stigmata felt by many female (and male mystics).

The use of religious imagery in connection with blood in performance is also seen in the work of Ron Athey. Athey's 'Torture Trilogy.' It is simultaneously a celebration of and an attack on classic religious imagery and its celebration of latent violence, disease and death. The 1991 production of 'Martyrs And Saints' focused on the cruelty and lack of care given by supposed "care givers". Three nurses, lips sutured closed, lead 3 mummified bodies on gurneys, into the theater, where the bodies are violated with enemas, speculums and genital piercing. Athey's ironic appropriation of S and M imagery further highlights the way in which BDSM has appropriated medical imagery and procedures into it's own performance art.

1994's 'Four Scenes From A Harsh Life' ended with Athey performing a solo suicide scene, inserting 16 large gauge hypodermic needles in a geometric pattern up his arm and attacking his face with a needle the size of a stiletto. Athey has contextualized this moment as an attempt to reclaim through passion and ritual, the violations he had previously committed against himself in anger and frustration. This cathartic contextualization again not only has similarities with religious ritual but also with the ritualized use of pain and violence within the context of BDSM.

Both the anxiety about spilling of bodily fluids and interest in S & M are concerns about the violation of societal taboos and the policing of the individual's body and its uses. These are issues at the fore of the work of the Irish artist Kira O'Reilly. O'Reilly has created a number of pieces which focus on procedures on the boundaries of both medicine (albeit sometimes historical medicine) and S& M, as well as being artistic acts in their own right. Kira's 1999 piece, 'Wet Cup' involved, cuts being made on points over the artist's body and heated glass suction cups being placed over the wounds. The heat and the suction drew blood out of the wounds.

Fire cupping-the placing of heated suction cups on the body is now used in S & M; wet cupping, the technique used by Kira, was used in the 19th century to treat hysterical women. Ironically, the performance was going to be banned by the first venue where it was commissioned. The artist pulled the live performance after one of the "conditions" for its staging was that she under go a psychiatric examination, leading one to wonder whether the hystericalization of women's bodies is still in full swing.

The audiences who go to see such performances report great emotional feeling and sense of shared experience at having, literally, seen an artist suffer for them on stage. The similarities of religious ritual are not coincidental. In the same way, although S & M scenes, whether private or public are more involved and integrated, there is a sense in which the violence enacted becomes a catharsis for all parties. But this catharsis is not merely abstract.

Much of the performance art that I see being created and am creating myself is very much concerned with placing the specific performer's body at the center of the piece. It's not just a female or male body, black or white, straight or gay, it's my body and I'm exposing and pushing its boundaries for you (the spectators.)

Ironically, although extreme imagery can be seen in the work of many artists, and there is a sense in which some art audiences are looking for the next big thrill, their work can still face censorship by venues, censorship by the media and the withholding of funding. This mirrors the way in which BDSM has become very hot in terms of superficial imagery invading popular culture: for example Janet Jackson's Demask top. However, a serious interest in public display of S & M activity is considered taboo. How many more TV and movie portrayals of S & M are going to erroneously link the activity to serial murder? When artists acknowledge their debt or interest in the world of BDSM these problems can be intensified, as seen in the reception of Athey's work and O'Reilly's piece. I recently submitted a proposal for a live performance and a video piece, using overt imagery from BDSM, to a performance festival. Was I being a brave avatar in acknowledging my debt to one of my communities or merely setting myself up for rejection? Only time will tell.

photo by Manuel Vsons

Cathloic Sex, 2000