Book Review: "Ten Years of Pain"

[Adam Shand]

Hopefully the formatting survives email, if not please visit the web  
site.

Regardless, it's completely fascinating.

Adam.

Source: http://www.bmezine.com/news/books/20040121.html

> In the west, our culture brings us up to perceive pain exclusively  
> as a negative experience. No matter how small the injury might be,  
> the most important action taken is to comfort the child. I am not  
> saying that is wrong, but in many cases parents end up teaching  
> their children to fear pain. If a child is bleeding, the hysteria  
> is even worse.
>
> Sometimes the pain is too strong to ignore, it is just impossible  
> not to pay attention to it. In these cases, I try to put all my  
> focus on the pain itself. I search for the centre of the pain. I  
> try to figure out how it spreads, where the borders of the  
> sensation are, and how it feels right next to where it’s hurting.  
> By going into the sensation and exploring it, I find the focus is  
> in studying the pain, instead of suffering it.




Ten Years of Pain
by Håvve Fjell - Review by Shannon Larratt

   	
LOOK INSIDE











Being a fakir is not just about showmanship, it is a way of life, a  
philosophy. You can not learn the discipline if you are not born with  
the urge to explore the limits of the body.
- Håvve Fjell
This may well be the best body play related book I have ever read  
(wow!). It is the first book in a long time where I’ve been felt an  
empathic connection with the content and been drawn deeper and deeper  
as I progressed. Not since I was a child reading science fiction on  
winter nights have I been so singularly possessed by a work of prose.

Håvve Fjell is the core of Pain Solution, a Norwegian performance art  
group — although it has also been a solo project for much of its  
existence. He exemplifies the modern fakir, both in the sense of  
performance, fine art, spirituality, and social consciousness. This  
book, photographed by Håvve’s sister Helene, is an intimate,  
unflinching, and deeply personal and engaging documentation of his  
first ten years — as Helene puts it, “Håvve is honest and he has  
something to say.” The book is written almost entirely in the first  
person, and its open style makes you feel like you’re reading Håvve’s  
thoughts.


Just over two years ago Håvve was asked to speak about self-harm at a  
Psykopp-organized lecture for psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and  
doctors — they were so drawn into the dialog that they approached him  
about producing a book on the subject. He begins this book by  
describing his childhood,

Each time I would try to aim a bit higher; cut a bit deeper, burn a  
bit longer or push more needles into my legs. Of course, no one  
around me would understand why I did these things to myself, and I  
could not explain. This led me to do my business in private and try  
to hide the results from family and friends.

Sound familiar?
In 1991 Håvve traveled to Brazil to develop his skills. In Brazil he  
met other performers, and did his first fakir show — to an audience  
who was not expecting or desiring his style of show, and jeered him  
with taunts of “disgusting”, “sick pervert” and “ugly”.


The rest of the night, I hid. I was too ashamed to see the organizers  
or talk to anyone. However, two good things came out of that  
particular night. That night, my girlfriend, Monica, conceived our  
first son, Kai. In addition, I learned an important lesson about  
performing in public: it is not what you do, but how you present it  
that matters.

His confidence returned along with his return to Oslo, where he put  
on another show with friends (much more successfully) and started  
thinking about combining the fakir element with performance and stage  
art. Along with his friends Eirik and Roberto he decided that maybe  
they could even make a little money if they built a show around fire,  
juggling, fakirism, and music, and in 1993 PSI (Pain Solution Inc.)  
was founded.
The first show was a success, but they quickly lost their backing  
band. The group shuffled members for a while, and Håvve took courses  
in street theatre, mime, clowning, and acting, and became more and  
more serious about the professionalism of his show. He returned to  
Brazil for some time and then back to Norway where he slowly re- 
tooled his shows for a broader audience — Pain Solution was getting  
TV gigs, many shows, and media appearances — and also worked with  
puppet theatre and other art-forms.


We were mostly doing fire stunts and I had padlocks sewn to my torso,  
this was quite new to me at the time and I was dancing wildly. It  
came to the point where I felt I was loosing contact with the floor,  
as if I was dancing without touching the ground. What I felt was pure  
pleasure. I watched the crowd from above and was about to fly up, and  
out from the stage. I do not know what really happened, but it was  
suddenly very quiet. A technical problem with the sound system had  
put an end to my almost leaving my body experience.

For Y2K Pain Solution was contracted to perform at the largest  
millennium event in Norway, a huge fire show on New Year’s even in  
Oslo. After being the pinnacle act in front of 200,000 people Pain  
Solution started getting larger contracts for custom performances,  
and Håvve began building a network of actors, contortionists,  
jugglers, and other performers to work with as shows dictated. Shows  
got even larger, and in 2001 Pain Solution co-produced Ringen with  
the Haugesund Theatre, a modern circus group. Large projects always  
put a lot of stress on a group, and Håvve decided to revert Pain  
Solution back to being a solo production.
He was then invited to do a series of performances for the Industrial  
Art Museum in Oslo, and presented them with a plan to do a sculptural  
or “poetic” suspension. They turned him down, saying that he would  
scare off their “elderly guests”. Håvve was furious — he’d been  
promoting the event for three weeks, and his art was being muted.


I saw no reason in arguing, nor did I see any reason to accept being  
excluded from the programme. I decided to hold a demonstration  
against censorship, at the museum on that given Saturday. I wrote a  
new press release explaining the situation. When I sent it out, I  
made sure they got a copy at the museum.
On the day of the event, I appeared at the Museum with a plaster cast  
from head to toe, with only holes for my eyes and nose, in a  
sculpture called Sensurert (Censored). As my assistants carried me  
out of the van and up the stairs outside the Museum, we were met with  
hostility; they would not let us set foot on their stairs and stopped  
us with brute force. Therefore I stood outside on the pavement for  
nearly two hours, with a supporting crowd, until the cold had made my  
limbs so numb that I had to give up my demonstration.



The demonstration was a success and the publicity led the House of  
Artists to contract Håvve to perform Censored, as well as Floating,  
the project which had been censored. Since it was a six-week  
installation, Håvve expanded it to Kvintett, five performances of  
physical restrictions — full body casting, flesh sewing, buried in  
broken glass, a Chinese-water torture-type event, and a horizontal  
suspension. The book describes his experiences and encounters in all  
of these.
However, after this successful series of performances (with a great  
deal of media and critical attention), Håvve again found himself  
alone and in debt — for the first time in his life, he had to get a  
job. Of course, with no education or experience, the best he could do  
was two part-time jobs — and he feared that a full-time job could  
interfere with his ability to continue developing Pain Solution.  
Kvintett had given him a new area to explore as an artist and a fakir  
— his own personal approaches to pain. His performances became more  
esoteric, and Håvve became an explorer and researcher as much as an  
artist.


In the west, our culture brings us up to perceive pain exclusively as  
a negative experience. No matter how small the injury might be, the  
most important action taken is to comfort the child. I am not saying  
that is wrong, but in many cases parents end up teaching their  
children to fear pain. If a child is bleeding, the hysteria is even  
worse.

* * *
Sometimes the pain is too strong to ignore, it is just impossible not  
to pay attention to it. In these cases, I try to put all my focus on  
the pain itself. I search for the centre of the pain. I try to figure  
out how it spreads, where the borders of the sensation are, and how  
it feels right next to where it’s hurting. By going into the  
sensation and exploring it, I find the focus is in studying the pain,  
instead of suffering it.

...which brings the specific history of Pain Solution up to date.


Håvve also communicated with Allen Falkner of TSD in Texas, and after  
doing a number of suspensions in private and in public (as mentioned  
above), beginning in 2002 he began co-organizing the annual Wings of  
Desire - Oslo Body Suspension Festival, an event similar to the  
SusCons hosted by various suspension groups around the world. He also  
talks about how hard it’s been for him to achieve spiritual  
experiences, largely due to the attention he must also pay to the  
stage aspect.
Addressing something too many amateur performers overlook, Håvve  
warns about some of the accidents that have happened on stage,  
including one horrific experience where he breathed in a lungful of  
paraffin, leading him to ten days hospitalization after the  
performance. Other shows left him with serious burns, and another  
with cuts in his hand that resulted in permanent nerve damage. Like  
many of us, he’s had last minute supply and preparation problems,  
rigging failures, and other mishaps. “Shit happens and the show must  
go on!”

The conclusion to the book contains commentary from many of the other  
members of Pain Solution mentioned in the book, both performers and  
technical staff. It also contains some interview excerpts and fine  
arts analysis of Håvve’s performances (“In search of a lost pain” by  
the Bureau of Contemporary Art Praxis, Rijeka, Croatia, and “Toward  
the aesthetics of pain” by Stahl Stenslie, Academy of Media Arts,  
Colgne Germany), commentary from Målfrid J. Frahm Jensen and Per  
Johan Isdahl (Ullevål University Hospital, Oslo) on the self-harm  
aspects, and from Siv Ellen Kraft (University of Tromsø, Norway) on  
the religious aspects. The book then finishes with a short FAQ.

This really is a remarkable book. My review does not do it the  
justice it deserves. I literally believe it is the only book that has  
been able to take such a snapshot. I do not believe that any body  
modification book collection can be called complete without this  
book, and I believe this is essential reading for anyone involved in  
performance or body art as well as those interested in art history  
and body-art/modification/play-history.



 From a technical point of view the printing in this book is  
gorgeous. It’s large format (10”x10”) and full color with silver spot  
color throughout its 180 pages and almost every page has photos. The  
text is clear and easy to read and the photos are bright, crisp, and  
vibrant (all the pictures in this review are of course from the  
book). I have nothing bad to say about the book on a conceptual or  
artistic level, but I do have two complaints in the technical area:

Binding. Ten Years of Pain is softbound (I made the same mistake with  
the ModCon book). As a result it damages easily; my copy got banged  
around a bit in the mail and the corners are dinged — this book is  
such an obvious collector and display piece that it should have been  
been printed as a hardcover in my opinion.

Price. Printing a limited edition book is expensive — as a result,  
Håvve’s book sells in Norway for 400 Kroners (about $60 US), which,  
once you add distribution costs, gets up to the $70 US mark by the  
time it’s made it to North America. That’s a lot to pay for a  
softcover; if it was any other book I wouldn’t be recommending it so  
strongly.

I believe that this book will touch you. It might get banged up a  
little easier than it should, and maybe it costs a little more than  
is normal, but this book will touch you. For me, it’s worth every  
cent, and I believe that if you’re a regular BME reader and you  
appreciate what’s being done here in general, this book will reach  
you as well.
As far as I know BMEshop is the only place this book is available  
online. Because I believe in it so strongly I have given up all  
royalties and commission on its sale in order to ensure the best  
possible price for you. Please note that we only have a few in stock  
right now, so if you visit the page and it’s sold out, please be sure  
to add your name to the “tell me when it’s back” list.



Shannon Larratt
BMEZINE.COM

PS. Be sure to check out the Pain Solution website at  
www.painsolution.net!
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