Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 03/14/01
Artist's Statement
My apologies to my friends with multiple piercings and tattoos,
especially Karen at Peter's. Body alterations are much more fashionable than
they used to be when I was young, so they may not necessailly signify much
anymore. But I do think that people with really extreme piercings and tattoos
are displaying a sort of passive-aggressive self-mutilaion, and that it has
a lot to do with childhood abuse. (All my clinical information on this subject
comes from th syndicated radio show Loveline, to which I am addicted
for reasons perhaps beter left unexamined.)
I've been thinking about thi sort of thing a lot since I moved
up to new York, where almost everyone you see is trying to project some carefully
designed image of themselves. They're all basically advertisements, as marketed
and packaged as any product, and who knows what the product really is (except
as with most ads how great can the product really be if it doens't just sell
itself?). It occurred to me that everyone could save a lot of money on clothes
and accessories if they just wore T-shirts printed with the image they wanter
to project: ART CHICK or PUNK or MODEL or ROCK MUSICIAN.
I have since been informed by some with-it perosn in New York
that there already are T-shirts like this.