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effect does it have on you seeing yourself taken over by fashion? 0rIan: From the start, my activities upset people so much that I couldn't even imagine there'd be someone, addressing a larger audience than me, who'd suddenly be able to make my work acceptable in contemporary mores. So, when I saw Walter's work, I was really torn between two feelings: very great happiness and total repulsion. Pleasure, because it's rare to see bodies departing from the canons of beauty on the catwalk. Disgust because what I do is my life's work and fashion, well, it changes every six months. No one's going to tell me, Walter, that next season, you won't switch to a totally different mood, orchestrated, say, round sweet little dolly girls? WaIter: That won't happen, because in my research, for my shows, on future beauty, I've not yet got where I want to get to. Everything's still linked in a coherent evolutionary way beyond existing stereotypes. Right from the start, this was how I worked; for my first show, W.&L.T., I thought up 120 combinations of integrated latex make-up. The idea was of a second protective skin covering you totally, but also of 'ready-to-wear' make-up. Your work was a revelation for me. It enabled me to continue my search into the subject. The same spirit will be present then, next season as well, even if it gets a slightly different expression. Do you think that in future, Carnal Art will become widespread, or that this new notion of aesthetic surgery will make it possible for us to change our appearance like putting on a clean shirt? WaIter: My idea is that it's the next physical manipulation after tattooing and piercing. I was already very surprised to see the trend emerging of inserting all these little geometrical volumes (liffle balls, cylinders, cones, etc), under the skin to create a cutaneous relief or the fashion of making ephemeral scarifications with an agent that attacks the skin. These two trends are very recent! They weren't significant when I began working on the theme of implants. 0rIan: Even if we try to sidestep the issue, we are always just products of our civilization. I know my work has touched a nerve. These things are in the air right now. All we've done is serve as catalysts by presenting and designing them in front of everyone. WaIter: Cyclically too, people look for new forms of expression. Today aesthetic surgery allows us to carry out physical manipulations that for technical or financial reasons weren't possible previously. It's developed considerably and has become far more democratic. 0rIan: And yet, it's still in its infancy. But to come back to the subject of piercing and tattoos, I get the impression that most of the time they are not 'signs of differentiation' but 'attributes of the clan', an incarnation of another form of social Dressure. |
Now,
my message consists rather in saying that 'everyone should make their own
selfportrait 'Everyone should find a way to define themselves personally'.Even
so, I think there are plenty of people today who are capable of carrying
out physical transformations. You only have to look at all the eccentricities
in people's dress. Our attitude towards the body is changing. Previously,
people believed that what nature had given us was sacred and that the sky
would fall if we tried to alter it. If aesthetic surgery became popular, don't you think that teenagers would want to be clones of their idols rather than differentiating themselves? WaIter: I think that's the case today! Most women turn to aesthetic surgery to conform to clichés. No, on the contrary, I think that for these young people living in urban tribes, who are the total embodiment of the style of the street with their 'shaved skull-pierced nose-tattooed skin, this new form of expression will symbolize a genuine desire to be different. 0rIan: One can't stop people from cloning. No more than one can stop genetic manipulation! One should quite simply take it into one's own hands, to provoke a debate about it before it actually occurs, so as to alert people and make them capable of resistance. That's why I insist on having a conference with a diversified public before I carry out one of my operations. As creative artists we have an enormous responsibility, so it's important that we are serious about our proposals because they could generate excesses of all sorts. Having said that, I don't know if I'm a good example for the young! I was confronted with the situation of a designer who, after reading an article on my work, had her ears cut into points to make her look like an elf The positive thing in this story was that the first surgeon she consulted had no problem accepting her request. While me, when I started out, I had a hell of a time unearthing a plastic surgeon who'd agree! The first ones who did it, did so in a very limited way so that I wouldn't be a bad example for their other patients. They were determined that, in spite of everything, I'd remain 'pretty'. It was only after I met an American feminist surgeon that I was able to take it further and give my work a genuine intellectual dimension. Even recently, during a conference, I was attacked by an aesthetic surgeon who said that he would never have operated on me. When I asked him why, he replied stupidly: 'Because there's no indication in your case'. It was such an incredible reply that I wondered what it might mean in aesthetic surgery, the notion of 'indication'. I guess for him it meant doelike eyes, a turned up nose, voluptuous lips and silicone breasts! |
