Fakir Musafar
Fakir Musafar | |
---|---|
![]() Musafar in 1982 | |
Born | Roland Loomis August 10, 1930 Aberdeen, South Dakota, U.S. |
Died | August 1, 2018 Menlo Park, California, U.S. | (aged 87)
Spouse(s) | Cléo Dubois |
Website | www.Fakir.org |
Roland Loomis (August 10, 1930 – August 1, 2018[1]), known professionally as Fakir Musafar, was an American performance artist considered to be one of the founders of the modern primitive movement.[2][3]
Life[]
Born Roland Loomis, at age four he claimed to have experienced dreams of past lives which, along with his anthropological studies, influenced his interests in body modification.[4][5] He served in the army during the Korean War,[5] and was first married for a short time in the 1960s.[5] In 1966 or 1967 he first performed a flesh hook suspension, inspired by his viewing of anthropological works.[6] In 1977 he gave himself the name Fakir Musafar.[5]
In the 1985 documentary Dances Sacred and Profane he was shown walking while wearing a device that pressed many small skewers into his upper body, and hanging from a tree by hooks in his chest, in his modified versions of other cultures' sacred ceremonies.[5] He was an extra ('Man in hotel room') in Die Jungfrauen Maschine (The Virgin Machine) in 1988,[7] and in 1991 he appeared in My Father Is Coming as Fakir.[8] He was featured in the 1989 book Modern Primitives,[5] which documented, propagated, and became influential in the modern body modification subcultures.
In 1990 he married Cléo Dubois.[5] From 1992 until 1999 he published the magazine Body Play and Modern Primitives Quarterly,[9][10] which focused on body modification topics such as human branding, suspension, contortionism, binding,[11] and modern piercing culture.[12] He led "Fakir Intensives" training workshops on these topics in San Francisco.[13]
Illness and death[]
In May 2018, Loomis announced on his website that he was suffering from terminal lung cancer.[14] He died on the morning of 1 August 2018.[15] His death was initially announced in a public Facebook post by his wife Cléo Dubois, and later confirmed by an obituary in Artforum.[1]
Tributes[]
The Leather Archives and Museum, founded in 1991,[16] has a Fakir Musafar exhibit as a permanent exhibit.[17] In 1993, he received the Steve Maidhof Award for National or International Work from the National Leather Association International.[18] In 2019, he was inducted into the Leather Hall of Fame,[19] and he is also an inductee of the Society of Janus Hall of Fame.[20] The Berkeley University Bancroft Library and the Association of Professional Piercers also have large archives of his work in photography, published writings, workshops, and BodyPlay magazines. His memorial bench in Byzbee Park in Palo Alto reads "Body is the door to Spirit".
Bibliography[]
- Fakir Musafar: Spirit + Flesh, Arena Editions, 2004, ISBN 1-892041-57-X
See also[]
- Domination & submission (BDSM)
- Risk-aware consensual kink
- Sadomasochism
- Safe, sane and consensual
- Sexual fetishism
Notes[]
- ^ Jump up to: a b "Fakir Musafar (1930–2018)". ArtForum. 2 August 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
- ^ Gauntlet – decorating the Modern Primitive Archived 2007-05-20 at archive.today
- ^ Wilson, Stephen (2002). Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology - Stephen Wilson - Google Books. ISBN 9780262731584. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
- ^ Voices from the Edge (1997), David Jay Brown & Rebecca McCLen Novick
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g "Fakir Musafar: passion for piercing, tattooing and corseting". Smh.com.au. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
- ^ Vale, V. and Andrea Juno (1989) Modern Primitives. RE/Search, San Francisco. ISBN 978-0-940642-14-0
- ^ "Die Jungfrauen Maschine (1988)". imdb.com. Retrieved 17 August 2018.
- ^ "My Father Is Coming (1991)". imdb.com/. Retrieved 22 August 2018.
- ^ "leatherarchives.org". Leather Archive & Museum. Retrieved 21 June 2015.
- ^ Daniel E. Slotnik. "Fakir Musafar, Whose 'Body Play' Went to Extremes, Dies at 87 - The New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
- ^ "Bodyplay.com". Body Play Magazine's Website. Retrieved 21 June 2015.
- ^ Body Play #4, 1992, "The Unique Piercings of Erik Dakota"
- ^ Voices from the Edge (1997), David Jay Brown & Rebecca McCLen Novick
- ^ "Farewell from Fakir". www.fakir.org. Retrieved 2018-08-03.
- ^ Slotnik, D. E., "Fakir Musafar, Whose ‘Body Play’ Went to Extremes, Dies at 87", The New York Times, Aug 13, 2018.
- ^ "About the LA&M - Leather Archives & Museum". Leatherarchives.org. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
- ^ "Exhibitions - Leather Archives & Museum". Leatherarchives.org. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
- ^ "List of winners". NLA International. 2019-03-14. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
- ^ "> Inductees". Leatherhalloffame.com. Retrieved 2019-12-31.
- ^ "Society of Janus". Erobay. 2019-07-20. Retrieved 2020-04-21.
References[]
External links[]
- Excerpt of interview - Discusses modern primitives, from RE/Search
- 1930 births
- 2018 deaths
- United States Army personnel of the Korean War
- American erotic photographers
- American people of Swedish descent
- BDSM people
- Body piercers
- Culture of San Francisco
- Deaths from lung cancer
- Deaths from cancer in California
- Modern primitive
- People from Aberdeen, South Dakota