| BELIEVE
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 hat
you do, Orlan, is to turn aesthetic surgery away from its conventional use,
but isn't there a quest for beauty in your approach? What do you think about
conventional devices? For instance, are your metamorphoses a substitute
for make-up? 0rIan: You should understand, the end result, on the level of everyday life, doesn't interest me. I can deal with any kind of failure. I think that, before my operations, I had a very beaufiftd image. It was an image I really liked and which I worked with in photos and videos for nearly twenty years. When I began my operation-performances in iggo, it was a way of calling this image into question again. And that was what was interesting! I wanted to be the opposite of the habitual expectation of what it is to be a woman, being beautiful according to masculine criteria. My objective was to turn aesthetic surgery away from its habits of improving people, making them look younger. I definitely don't care for obvious seduction. I am an independent woman who wants to be free in relation to men. But it amuses me a lot to transform myself My art is my seduction! I often use make-up. My bumps are raised with sparkling powders just as one would use eyeliner to accentuate one's eyes. All my work is in fact based on the idea, that in our epoch, what is interesting, is the idea of 'and'. Previously our judeo Christian culture always forced us to choose, to 'Satanize' one side to the benefit of the other. It's one thing or the other. But for me it's always both!: good and evil, ugly and beautiful, live and artificial, real and pretence. And it's in the same 'and'spirit that I want to show you inside and outside at the same time during my operations. I think of the body as a costume and I get a lot of pleasure out of changing it. It's the same as changing your appearance, for that matter. I love dressing up! Where does it come from, both of you, this obsession with metamorphosis? Walter: I've always adored it! When I was a kid, I was fascinated by David Bowie and his chameleon-like appearance. I thought he had a marvellous fantasy. His looks were in perfect harmony with his musical iniiverse. His personality and his environment formed a whole! For me the atmosphere in my shows is just as important as the clothes. Every season, I enjoy changing my appearance to project a new image through my portraits. An image that's very often an aggressive one and forming a total break with my true personality in such a way that it disturbs people and does not reveal who I really am. The work gives me a strange feeling of creating someone else. It's very intoyicating! |
0rIan:
Fixity, that's where
death begins! Everything that renews itself is a hymn to life. To change
means to take distance with regard to a certain number of things. It's a
way of not submitting to everything that's banal and that ends by going
over us like a steamroller. It's a way of announcing colour, of having a
visiting card to meet the world, of cocking a snook at society! The idea
of metamorphosis is a very old myth but in fact you know perfectly well
that all one can change is one's skin. At least until genetic manipulation
is really up and running! No tattoos, no piercings, no implants... While you regularly change appearance, Walter, you don't seem personally to have made use of all these manipulations that you so often refer to in your work! The transition to the act, do you find it frightening? WaIter: I'm frightened by what attracts me. First of all, the pain. And then the fact that it's irreversible. In spite of my fantasy and my experimental temperament, I am someone who's very realistic. I don't use drugs either. 0rIan: Me, I'm the opposite. That's what I like about it, that it's irreversible. All too often in life, you make an excuse and backtrack on something. Sometimes people ask me if I will have my bumps removed. Wlhat's it all about, this whole song about going back every time on one's decisions or one's convictions? It has to be good from start to finish like in the theatre! That's all the more interesting for me, because it's a struggle against nature. The body is a machine that is extremely fabulous but at the same time, 'life is the killer!' Nature frustrates me with its programmed constraints that you can't do anything about. What button can you push, after all, to stop your cells and neurons from degenerating? So my work is also a struggle against nature, against DNA, the inexorable. The fact that it inscribes itself immediately in the flesh is primordial. Having said that, I'm like Walter, I detest suffering. The first thing I tell the surgeon is, 'No pain please!'. Sure, my body suffers but I don't feel it because the pain is suppressed, I can laugh, and sing and talk. While if I am suffering, that stops all my activities and totally monopolizes my thought. You've had nine operations, Orlan. What are your limits in this matter? Could you graft an element of another nature, for instance, a penis instead of a nose, referring to the sculptures of the Chapman brothers? 0rIan: It would still have to work! With a computer, one can do a lot of things. On your body, it's different. But it's true I want to have an attitude to myself by which I stay serene. I don't just do anything, nor do I want to put my life in danger. As a result, I always take risks that are very carefully calculated. |
