Full Description
The practice of body suspension — piercing one's own flesh with metal hooks and hanging from them — and its uniquely sprawling community challenge our cultural understanding of pain. The suspendees experience physical suffering to trigger altered states of consciousness that help them define and create an enhanced version of the self. Through experimental and practice-based methodology, Beyond Pain combines thirteen years of intermittent ethnographical fieldwork during suspension festivals and private events in Italy, Portugal, and Norway, along with online sites such as Facebook groups, to uncover the often silenced and misunderstood voices of the people who undertake this practice.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Prologue
Introducing suspension, this project and me
Chapter 1. A History of Body Suspension
Chapter 2. Other Stories about Suspensions
Chapter 3. The Body Suspension Community
Chapter 4. The Summer
Chapter 5. Suspensions and Suspendees Online
Chapter 6. There is So Much More Beyond Pain
Chapter 7. Coming Back Down on Earth
Conclusions
Bibliography
