‘He threw body piercing parties and lay on a bed of nails': the wild life of body modification guru Fakir Musafar

The Guardian

19-03-2025

In the opening moments of A Body to Live in, a documentary by American film-maker Angelo Madsen, we are confronted with two black-and-white photographs. Taken in 1944 by the teenage Roland Loomis, they show him stripped to his underwear, his waist heavily restricted by a leather belt, a rope wrapped several times around his neck.
Loomis later renamed himself Fakir Musafar and became one of the founders of the modern primitive movement – a subculture that revolves around body modification practices including branding, suspension, contortion and binding. A Body to Live in, which premieres internationally at London's BFI Flare film festival this week, dissects Musafar's body of work, which explored the tension between masculinity and femininity, pain and pleasure, spirituality and S&M.
Madsen met Musafar in 2004 through the latter's wife, the artist Cleo Dubois, whose commentary features heavily in the film. They remained close friends until Musafar's death from cancer in 2018. Dubois gave him 'free rein' to explore Musafar's vast archive, including more than 100 hours of previously unseen video and audio recordings. The film weaves together these materials with Musafar's stunning photographs and the voices of radical performance artists including Annie Sprinkle and Ron Athey.
A Body to Live in follows the modern body modification movement from when it emerged as a subculture in the early 1970s, while also exploring the pushback it received and the ethical questions still raised by the phenomenon of self-inflicted pain. Some of the imagery in the film seems designed to make us think about the line that separates pleasure and self-expression from self-harm, such as videos of two-point chest suspension – the practice of dangling someone in the air by metal hooks attached to their nipples.
We hear the artist narrating his early experiments in body play – such as during a weekend when he was 17 when his parents were away. Alone, he fasted for two days and restricted his waist with a chain, and clipped his body with hundreds of clothes pegs – an experience he said gave him feelings of belonging and of power. In adulthood, Musafar started throwing self-taught naked 'piercing parties', then starred in 'freakshow' performances inspired by circus acts, such as lying on beds of nails in front of audiences as weights were placed on top of him.
In the 1970s, the body modification movement began to gather momentum. Musafar's core philosophy – that piercings and pain could be a way of focusing the mind and connecting with the spiritual world – inspired intense devotion from his audience. And, contrary to how people might interpret BSDM today, his take on it seemed much more inspired by care than submission and domination. We see Musafar's followers gathering together in sunny fields like hippies, where they chant, dance and pierce each other's bodies. Dubois explains that she was brought to BDSM because it was 'all about consent', which helped her to recover from being sexually assaulted.
The film includes photographs of Musafar wearing makeup and women's clothes in his mother's bedroom. And many of his body modifications, such as stretching his chest and constricting his waist, feel purposefully connected to an exploration of femininity. 'He was always between genders, but he didn't call it that. He called it being in the cracks,' explains Dubois. Instead, he seemed more interested in finding a solid justification for his practices in spirituality, or through intellectualising the allure of body modification.
'Something that I found in archival interviews is that he was very insecure about how he was being perceived, and he was constantly trying to prove that he wasn't crazy,' Madsen says. 'His biggest fear was being institutionalised, because that's what they fucking did in the 1960s. If you were found cross-dressing or doing weird things with your body, you were going to be sent to a mental hospital.'
To some, Musafar was an inspiration, but to many others he was an aberration. The film chronicles near-constant backlash, including political attacks in the 90s on performance artists who received federal funding. There was also anger in the Native American community, whose leaders issued a 'declaration of war' in 1993 against those who misrepresented their 'sacred traditions and practices'.
Madsen says that a lot of people still have issues with Musafar's work because of the 'cultural appropriation' factor. 'Not in the sense that he had bad intentions, or was trying to harm anyone,' he explains. 'He's done all of the reading available. He's visited some of these places. He's witnessed these rituals. But he doesn't have the same access to these cultures as people who are part of them.'
No matter how extreme some of the imagery – such as metal piercing bars entering almost every conceivable part of the body, often at the hands of self-taught practitioners – by the end of the film, it feels noticeably less confronting. Perhaps that is because, however niche these practices may seem, the audience starts to relate to the desire for community and acceptance, or to the experience of being drawn to something and feeling pressured to justify it. The physicality of the film also nods to the vast range of things 'regular' people do to their bodies – such as running marathons, extreme diets, intermittent fasting, or using alcohol and drugs – as ways of coping with the world.
'This film is about trying to figure out how to have relationships – on what terms, through what means, and what feels good in relation to ourselves, the world and other people,' says Madsen. 'Really, it's a film about love.'
A Body to Live in is at BFI Flare festival on 20 and 21 March and Fringe! festival on 23 March, both in London